Hide some diagnostic information in output window
This issue was created automatically from an original Mantis Issue. Further discussion may take place here.
Currently the output window is a raw dump of every error and warning that is issued from the VTK layer. Each one almost always comes tagged with a bunch of information (source file, line number, class name, object pointer) that is meaningless to any user that is not actively developing that code. This makes the errors and warnings much harder to read (and hence much less useful when they occur).
For example, let's say that the user mistypes something into the calculator filter. The output window will pop up with the following intimidating text:
ERROR: In /Users/kitware/Dashboards/MyTests/NightlyMaster/ParaViewSuperbuild-Release-Python27/paraview/src/paraview/VTK/Common/Misc/vtkFunctionParser.cxx, line 1455 vtkFunctionParser (0x7f9ce49ae890): Syntax error: expecting a variable name; see position 0
ERROR: In /Users/kitware/Dashboards/MyTests/NightlyMaster/ParaViewSuperbuild-Release-Python27/paraview/src/paraview/VTK/Common/Misc/vtkFunctionParser.cxx, line 1455 vtkFunctionParser (0x7f9ce49ae890): Syntax error: expecting a variable name; see position 0
Warning: In /Users/kitware/Dashboards/MyTests/NightlyMaster/ParaViewSuperbuild-Release-Python27/paraview/src/paraview/VTK/Filters/Core/vtkArrayCalculator.cxx, line 421 vtkPVArrayCalculator (0x7f9ce49ae060): An error occurred when parsing the calculator's function. See previous errors.
That is way to verbose for a simple error that is easily corrected (once a user figures out what is going on). It would be much more effective to have output like the following:
Syntax error: expecting a variable name; see position 0 [2 occurrences] [Details]
An error occurred when parsing the calculator's function. See previous errors. [Details]
As you can see, simply by removing the extraneous information, the error becomes much easier to understand. Each entry should also have some GUI element that allows you to see the full details. (The two syntax errors have also been combined to one per bug #15239 (closed).)
Almost all VTK messages use the same format (created by the vtkError/WarningMacro), so parsing this information should be very easy. It is probably worth playing with different GUI widgets to use to display the information. A text or html box might be fine, but a table or hierarchical view might work better.