Controlling error, warning, and diagnostic messages

VAPOR GUI can display or log three types of messages:

• An Error Message occurs when VAPOR is not able to perform the requested action.  This may be because the user has requested something that is unsupported, or there may be a problem with the data or the computer hardware.
• A warning message indicates that it is possible that VAPOR will not perform as expected.  A warning message is presented to alert the user to be aware of possible unexpected behavior.
• A diagnostic message is used to indicate the operations that are being performed by VAPOR as they are performed.  It is not an indication of anything being incorrect.

By default, Error messages and warning messages are presented to the user as popups in the user interface.  The popups must be dismissed before VAPOR GUI will proceed.  By default, diagnostic messages are not shown.  After the same warning or error message is displayed three times the user is asked whether or not to silence the message.

Users may choose to display error, warning, or popup messages any number of times, and/or these messages can be displayed in a log file.  The User Preferences panel has a section "Message Logging and Popups" where these preferences are set.

If the environment variable "VAPOR_DEBUG" is set, then all diagnostic messages are sent to the console from which VAPOR GUI was launched.  On Windows, these messages are written to the log file.