Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: [Gnumed-bugs] Measurements plugin display uninformative when no measurements exist

[Jim Busser]

On 2010-02-04, at 1:04 PM, Karsten Hilbert wrote:

>> On changing plugin
>> 
>>      clear status line
> 
> This would prematurely wipe out text we may actually want to
> keep there across plugin changes. 

I am still not convinced that the above is a reason to delay wiping out the 
text. For example, when a user would log into GNUmed and by default have no 
patient active, a click on any active-patient-dependent-plugin raises the 
status message:

        Cannot switch to [Plugin name]: no patient selected

My problem is that the above continues to sit there, despite that it makes no 
sense to be remaining there after a user had (in the meantime) activated many 
other patients and for example viewed and signed measurements all while the 
status message says

        Cannot switch to [Measurements]: no patient selected

I still maintain that the status message is relevant *at the time* that the 
action caused it to appear, because it is at this time that the user (if they 
desired some explanation) would look to the bottom left, where the status 
message resides, but that if the content of the status line is so important as 
to warrant being brought to the user's attention, then such information should 
perhaps be communicated in a dialog.

Is the status message truly anything different than

        additional information that the user may appreciate to
        have, but only if they are interested to know what is
        going on

and in some respects not really all that different than, say, running with 
"debug" on?