unhelpful error message for unsupported codecs

[sascha_silbe]

If a Journal entry can't be played due to a missing codec, the error message presented is not only hard to understand for children, but also doesn't mention which codec is missing:

Error: There is no codec present that can handle the stream's type. - gstplaybasebin.c(2327): prepare_output(): /GstPlayBin:player

[godiard]

If a format file is not supported must show a nice and understandable message.

[erikos]

Moving this one out.

[manuq]

Also (but less important) would be good to style the message box.

[manuq]

Screenshot of the error, unstyled message box.

[garycmartin]

That is rather unhelpful & ugly! ;) Some suggestions: Centre the message, plenty of padding either side of the text, line wrap if necessary, remove the technical jargon/code, put an error badge icon above the text as per designs like the other user feedback in ticket #3714 [1]. If we can't easily get at the missing codec name, then a clear, friendly error message would be a good improvement over the current behaviour:

[1]  http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/attachment/ticket/3714/Jukebox_playlist_informational_only.png

[humitos]

The message shown in the canvas was moved to an ErrorAlert, so I improved it a bit until we get the proper styling of the error in the canvas as Gary suggested (an screenshot of this is needed with the correct icons and texts)

Some comments:

• GStreamer does not inform us about what is the plug-in that is missing.
• There isn't an specific error code for missing plug-ins, so I had to check that in the error message.

I'm attaching a patch that does that and tries to make it a bit more friendly.

[humitos]

Before applying the patch

[humitos]

After applying the patch

[humitos]

A new suggestion to the message

[humitos]

In the future we can use this to install missing plugins:

 http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/fedora/17/x86_64/p/PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin-0.7.4-3.fc17.x86_64.html

[humitos]

A new version after a talk with gonzalo

[garycmartin]

The dialogue msg text can drop the "Maybe", it should just read "The required plugin was not found for this type of file <mimetype>", otherwise this is looking good.

[humitos]

Oh, sorry. Maybe I didn't explain well why we decided to use the word "Maybe" at the beginning.

GStreamer doesn't tell us about what is the specific error. It just says there was an ERROR but it could be for many reasons. So, as the most common error is a missing plugin, we use "Maybe" (because we are not sure :) )

[garycmartin]

Replying to humitos:

Oh, sorry. Maybe I didn't explain well why we decided to use the word "Maybe" at the beginning.

GStreamer doesn't tell us about what is the specific error. It just says there was an ERROR but it could be for many reasons. So, as the most common error is a missing plugin, we use "Maybe" (because we are not sure :) )

Can the code check to see if <mimetype> is really missing? If this is too complicated, we should just go with a more generic version of the 'this file can't be played message'. Perhaps:

Error:
This "<mimetype>" file can not be played.

[godiard]

Pushed as 867c2d08570a5dc9a506071e84103612f4929320 with the message suggested by Gary