If I open a file with gv (as a command line argument, or opened via File menu), there is no error message if gs cannot render the file. Instead, gv simply shows an empty page.

To test:

gv /bin/ls

Expected:

Some sort of error message that /bin/ls is not a valid Postscript file.

Actual behavior:

gv shows an empty page.

This can be rather confusing, as an invalid PS file is not the same as an empty one.

Note:

Old versions of gv used to display an error message in this case.
This was apparently changed by the patch for  #19632, "quiet and .gv watch settings are not respected".

This patch seems to suppress all popup messages if option -quiet is set, even error messages from gs. This seems incorrect to me, as the manpage only says that -quiet causes gs to be called with -dQUIET. It says nothing about suppressing all error messages.

If gv is called with -noquiet, opening an invalid file causes an error popup, as expected. However, -quiet seems to be the default for gv, hence the observed behaviour.