[texworks] Analyzing the log

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2 June 2009 Alain Delmotte wrote:

 > Hi!
 > 
 > In french.comp.text.tex there was a message about texloganalyser (Perl 
 > script), version 0.6
 >     Copyright 2006-2009 Thomas van Oudenhove
 > 
 > But this is Perl!!! Still another dimension for me.
 > 
 > I don't exactly know what is done, but it could be interesting to be 
 > included(?) in TeXworks.
 > 
 > Another way to help using the log, would be log highlighting of the log 
 > information about "warnings", "overfull" and "underful".
 > Would it be very difficult to implement?

Hmm, in principle it's a good idea to extend a particular program by
external code instead of providing all the functionality in C/C++.
You can provide extensions and fix bugs without the need to re-compile
the binary.  This saves a lot of time, especially because TeXworks is
supposed to work on many different platforms.

However, instead of calling arbitrary external programs, I think it's
much better to integrate a Lua engine into TeXworks.  Then almost
everything can be done without re-compiling the binaries.

The best example of such an approach is Emacs.  Most of its
functionality comes from files written in Lisp.  It's really
worthwhile to study Emacs.

There is certainly no benefit to hard-code a log-analyzer in the
binary.  It can better be done by external code.  But calling a Perl
script would only solve *one* problem.  A built-in Lua engine could
make TeXworks as extensible as Emacs.

Besides all the other advantages Lua offers, the reason I prefer Lua
is that it's extremely powerful but its clear concepts make it easy to
learn.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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