[GNC] Locked out of gnucash

[Colin Law]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 13:59, D via gnucash-user
<gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> ...
> Remember that the lock file and this check exist firstly to prevent multiple users from opening the file at one time--and that is still a possibility.

That may be reason for the test but it is not the most common cause.
In fact arguably it is a deficiency in the s/w that it is not able to
distinguish between the two situations.  The best solution would be
for the s/w to know whether it crashed or whether the db is actually
open, but I don't know whether this is possible.  If it isn't then the
message shown should be as helpful as possible to the user.

> Adding to the error message to account for when the software crashes seems like overkill (as does linking to the documentation from a dialog, BTW). The topic is covered both in the wiki and in the Tutorial, and a quick check online or in the documentation should resolve the problem. Expanding messages to cover all eventualities results in messages that are overly complex, overwhelming, and still misunderstood.

Perhaps a message saying "Error 5135 if you don't understand what this
means then you should have read the wiki" would be a solution.

Colin