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Bug#612193: marked as done (ps2pdf (and thus gs) has very useless and misleading error message )

Your message dated Fri, 05 Jan 2024 01:01:13 -0600
with message-id <15204546.uLZWGnKmhe@riemann>
and subject line Re: ps2pdf (and thus gs) has very useless and misleading error message
has caused the Debian Bug report #612193,
regarding ps2pdf (and thus gs) has very useless and misleading error message 
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
612193: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=612193
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: gs-aladdin
Version: 6.50-5

When doing a
ps2pdf input.ps /somepath/output.pdf
and /somepath is not accessible for the user running this command
(e.g. when run as a printcap script with user "lpd"),
ps2pdf outputs an *incredibly* stupid error message
"**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting."

This prompted me to read gs man page, which says that "initial output
device" can be adjusted via -sDEVICE.
Thus I mistakenly thought that -sDEVICE=pdfwrite is missing from the
ps2pdf command in order to execute successfully, which didn't work,
as that wasn't the problem.
And of course the man page doesn't even contain the exact term
"initial device", only "initial output device".

I didn't think for even a second that the destination directory might be
inaccessible, due to this message !!
Thus this stupid and misleading error message managed to cost me
at least 25 minutes.

Please make sure that such non-verbose and totally useless error messages
get extinct in the whole program, just like I'm always doing the same
kind of janitorial work with Wine (www.winehq.com).

This is a prime example of a completely user-unfriendly part of a some
OSS programs... 

Why oh why are developers that careless about error messages ??
It's the most important part of a program, yet they still manage to
completely mess it up in most cases.

Thank you very much for fixing this and making sure that programs do become
user-friendly !

P.S.: If I were to assign a bug level to this, I'd assign "critical" to it,
since programs should really and definitely always make sure that their
user communication is just about perfect.

-- 
Andreas Mohr                        Stauferstr. 6, D-71272 Renningen, Germany
Tel. +49 7159 800604                http://home.nexgo.de/andi.mohr/

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
On Fri, 19 Oct 2001 17:03:28 +0200 Andreas Mohr <andi@rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de> 
wrote:
> Package: gs-aladdin
> Version: 6.50-5
> 
> When doing a
> ps2pdf input.ps /somepath/output.pdf
> and /somepath is not accessible for the user running this command
> (e.g. when run as a printcap script with user "lpd"),
> ps2pdf outputs an *incredibly* stupid error message
> "**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting."

Version 10.02.1 also prints a message about not being able to open the output 
file:

$ ps2pdf irw.ps /aslkjdflsdjfsld/blah.pdf
GPL Ghostscript 10.02.1: **** Could not open the file /aslkjdflsdjfsld/blah.pdf 
.
**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.

Closing as I believe this satisfies the initial request.

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--- End Message ---
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