[Paraview] Error dialogs in python shell plugin

[m.c.wilkins at massey.ac.nz]

Hi,

I am having a devil of a time trying to get my python shell plugins
to work right, I can't seem to find any extensive documentation, just
loads of examples...  Anyway, hopefully you will be able to help me!

I would like to popup a dialog box when there is an error in the
plugin.  How can I do that?  If the user doesn't have the python shell
open, they can't even see the output of a print statement.

Secondly how can one gracefully end a python shell plugin?   A
sys.exit() just kills paraview since the plugin is running in the
same process I guess.  Throwing an exception is OK if the user has the
python shell open, otherwise it is just a silent failure.

Thank you for any help

Matt Wilkins