browser open screen hides errors

[kquick]

Use Ctrl-O to get the list of posted links (the "browser open screen"), then hit Return on a link to request the browser to open it. If there is an error opening the browser, that is reported as a local error message in the current channel, but the current mode still displays the list of links, so the error is not visible until Esc exits the link list display and returns to the channel. This can lead to the user waiting quite a while for the browser to be opened (and maybe issuing multiple requests via Return) before giving up an exiting the link list display to discover that there were errors.

Recommendation add a display of errors to the link list display instead or as well.

This occurs with config urlOpenCommandIsInteractive = False. With this config set to True, the error is visible because Matterhorn pauses and displays the regular terminal screen where stdout and stderr are visible.

[jtdaugherty]

Somewhat ironically, this didn't used to be the case because we would always return to the channel after opening any link from the C-o view. A user requested that we not do that so that it would be easier to open links repeatedly, so this was apparently an unforeseen consequence of that change. 😊

[jtdaugherty]

Another approach that I'd like to consider is to just open a pop-up box with the error that you have to dismiss in order to return to the C-o list (which would be visible underneath). That way we don't add a list of errors to the UI, but we can ensure that the user sees the error before continuing. If that gets to be too annoying for them, we could advise them to write their URL opener script in a way that would silence the noise.