[l2h] small bug

[Tzafrir Cohen]

Hi

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Ross Moore wrote:

> > caused by my version of netpbm, but I guess that it's a good idea to 
> > leave this `verbose' option in releases--at least for compatibility 
> > reasons. (I guess this option doesn't do anything important? ;)
> 
> In fact it *does* do something important, but only in versions 9.x
> (with x > ???  I'm not sure which version first needs it.)
> 
> At some point,  pnmcrop  stopped producing messages saying how many
> rows and columns had been cropped. The point of  -verbose  is to get
> those messages back. Any version that produces the messages anyway
> clearly doesn't need the  -verbose  option.
> 
> These messages are extremely useful when debugging why some images
> may not have been made correctly.

Yes. However, those messages are troubling when _not_ debugging the
program.

Suppose I want to use l2h as a filter in a script. I'm really not
interested with how exactly it worked, as long as it worked properly
(think of of the logic of cron jobs, where any output indicates an error).

For instance: I have created the following simple test.tex:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello
\end{document}

And now I run:
--------------------
$ latex2html -verbosity 0 test.tex
This is LaTeX2HTML Version 99.2beta8 (1.42)
by Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.

Revised and extended by:
 Marcus Hennecke, Ross Moore, Herb Swan and others
...producing markup for HTML version 3.2  



Loading /usr/lib/latex2html/versions/html3_2.pl

 *** processing declarations ***

Loading /usr/lib/latex2html/versions/latin1.pl
OPENING /home/tzafrir/projects/Label/test.tex 

Cannot create directory test/: File exists, reusing it.

Note: Working directory is /home/tzafrir/projects/Label/test
Note: Images will be generated in /tmp/l2h19210

texexpand V99.2beta8 (Revision 1.10)



Loading /usr/lib/latex2html/styles/texdefs.perl...
Loading /usr/lib/latex2html/styles/article.perl
Reading ...
++

Translating ...0/1..;;
1/1..;;.

Doing section links ......
Done.
--------------------


Do I really need to know all of those details? There should be a -quiet
(or verbosity level of -1 , for the matter) that displays only errors.

Actually, I think that most of those messages (Loading, Reading, etc.)
belong in verbosity level 1. By default the program should work, and they
are not necessary. If it doesn't work, then the user should be smart
enough to turn on debugging modes. (perhaps make it part of the standard
failure message, in case of verbosity level 0).

l2h is not as bad as latex, where every package spits out its own
"interesting" information, and there is no criteria for what is "debug"
information. But still, this is not a well-behaving command-line
program.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir