[pmwiki-users] include failure

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 03:41:45PM -0600, JB wrote:
> > (:include SomePage error=... :)
> > 
> > where the "error=" parameter says what to display if
> > the include fails.
> 
> I would hate to do this in every single include statement.
> How about have displaying an include error message
> option to turn OFF in the local/config.php?
> 
> # set $DisplayIncludeErrors to 'off' if you do not want
> # an error message displayed when an include fails
> # default value is "on"
> #$DisplayIncludeErrors='off';

Some would say the default should be 'off'.  Certainly
that's PmWiki's traditional mode (and I'm often reluctant
to change defaults).

> > The difficult issue here is that either default can be
> > considered "reasonable" depending on the application (and
> > each default is arguably "wrong" for certain applications).
> 
> I dont see this.  While it is true that people won't miss
> content that they cannot see why would anyone want the 
> possibility of missing content?  

1.  Some admins who are running public-facing websites don't
    want the possibility of error messages appearing in their
    output.

2.  Some people who have read-protected pages don't want
    viewers to have any clue that the read-protected pages
    exist.  An error message would tend to be a pretty
    big clue.

I'm not saying that it's always wrong to display an error message
for an inaccessible page, I'm just saying that some admins would 
claim (have claimed) that they don't want visitors to know about
the existence of read-protected pages.

Pm