Unmodal Wimp Error box

One of the problems on RISC OS 4.xx and erlaier is the modal Wimp Error (or Info) box that when appear on the screen for any kind of reasons then blocks all the tasks in the back-ground.

1. An error occur while I left my RiscPC making backups.
2. The error box appear on the screen and i had my Samba Server running and my PC was copying files from the RiscPC.
3. The effect of this (now) is that all get blocked until i go on my RiscPC desktop and i click on the OK button!

There is a way to fix this problem? (if it wasn’t corrected on the RISC OS 5 of course)

This has already been discussed in the thread “Multitasking Message Window” at http://www.riscosopen.co.uk/forum/forums/2/topics/25

Perhaps this could be merged.

3. The effect of this (now) is that all get blocked until i go on my RiscPC desktop and i click on the OK button!

You’d probably be best off with one of the 3rd party ‘close an error window automatically after a certain amount of time’ utilities.

...ok about the merging.

About ‘close an error window atomatically after e certain ammount of time’... sorry James but this answer really don’t help me because:

1. If I am trasfering a file, it will get stopped (unless the utility you are talking about close the message box before the file transfer “timeout” expire)... so at last I must configure this kind of utility to close a window in less than 1 or 2 seconds.
2. I lose the error message so i’ll never know what happened on my RiscPC (‘cause we don’t have a standard event logger, yes we have syslog but it is not used as a satndard).
3. An utility instead of a correction of something that have not a “correct logic” look like a “dirty fix”.

if this is a wishlist forum then I would prefer that (at last) RISCOS Wimp may be improved to have a good Window Manager Inteface…

But thank you anyway James.

Possibly you could update Wimp_ReportError to include new ways of reporting errors (such as non-blocking dialogues, timed or otherwise) – but this would be triggered by setting a new flag in R1 (IIRC?) and passing other arguments as necessary.

That means that old applications wouldn’t be affected, though, unless updated – and would still be calling it with the older flag settings and arguments, so would still block. The only applications that could use the new types of error box would be those that the developer has written to cope with them.

Thanks Vince :)