Message Boxes

[l0calh05t]

It should display a message box or something similar... and these aren't compatible with streams.

Why not? You can redirect the stream to whatever you want, even message boxes.
The good thing with standard streams is that they don't care about where they write, they just send their content to their streambuf, which can be specialized to write to anything that support text output.

Technically it might be possible. But semantically it would probably turn out to be nonsense. When do you display the message box? When a newline occurs? What about multiline messages? Also, when is the stream flushed (and the message box actually displayed) etc.

EDIT:
And this would still require a platform-dependent message box ;-)

[Laurent]

Technically it might be possible. But semantically it would probably turn out to be nonsense. When do you display the message box? When a newline occurs? What about multiline messages? Also, when is the stream flushed (and the message box actually displayed) etc.

The stream is flushed and the message box displayed, when... well, the stream is flushed
I mean std::cerr << std::flush (which is also called by std::cerr << std::endl). A multiline message can then be displayed using '\n'.

EDIT:
And this would still require a platform-dependent message box

But then it's not mandatory to be implemented in SFML

[l0calh05t]

Technically it might be possible. But semantically it would probably turn out to be nonsense. When do you display the message box? When a newline occurs? What about multiline messages? Also, when is the stream flushed (and the message box actually displayed) etc.

The stream is flushed and the message box displayed, when... well, the stream is flushed
I mean std::cerr << std::flush (which is also called by std::cerr << std::endl). A multiline message can then be displayed using '\n'.

not exactly. streams can be flushed at any time, not only when flush or endl are used!

EDIT:
And this would still require a platform-dependent message box

But then it's not mandatory to be implemented in SFML

but still very useful ;-)

[Laurent]

not exactly. streams can be flushed at any time, not only when flush or endl are used!

How (or when)?

but still very useful

Still out of scope, in my opinion

[Hiura]

not exactly. streams can be flushed at any time, not only when flush or endl are used!

How (or when)?

When the buffer is full. (?)
But std::cerr has no buffer so std::cerr << std::flush does nothing.

[Laurent]

But std::cerr has no buffer so std::cerr << std::flush does nothing.

What do you mean?

[l0calh05t]

not exactly. streams can be flushed at any time, not only when flush or endl are used!

How (or when)?

When the buffer is full. (?)

Yes.

But std::cerr has no buffer so std::cerr << std::flush does nothing.

Not quite sure what you mean either

[Ankou]

I would like to see this too.
The only way to have such a thing would be to use an additional GUI library but this is way to heavyweight just for showing an error.
Showing errors in errordialog is at least on windows standard and not inconvenient on other plattforms so I think it really is the best way to inform the user that an error occured.
You could make an errorfunction in the Systemlib or wherever which shows an messagebox, logs the error and so on, I think this would fit sfml much better then adding a messagebox class since a general messagebox would be a gui element..

[Hiura]

One week later...  :roll:

But std::cerr has no buffer so std::cerr << std::flush does nothing.

What do you mean?

I mean this : http://www.dinkumware.com/manuals/?manual=compleat&page=iostream.html#cerr

The object controls unbuffered insertions to the standard error output

[Laurent]

Ok, but it doesn't matter as I'm planning to use my own ostream instance for SFML instead of std::cerr