Sorry, but I have to disagree again.
STDERR, AFAIK, is working perfectly on ActivePerl 5.8.0 on my Win2k box. The app I've mentioned writes to a log file and I get all sorts of error when things go wrong.
I know Windows isn't perfect (at all) but people should have a little more faith on things running on it, instead of expecting them to go wrong just because it's a Win32 environment... Please, don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be rude, but I think any generalization is bad.
I agree with you when you say that STDERR shouldn't be "muted", but then again neither I or the OP were suggesting this (if I ever do please kill me), we just want to redirect STDERR so we can treat it before displaying it, if I understood him correctly.
Background: When I say "we" referring to me and the OP, it's because of my node:
Formatting STDERR.
Best regards,
my
($author_nickname, $author_email) = ("DaWolf","erabbott\@terra.com.br")
if ($author_name eq "Er
Galvão Abbott");