[luatex] [lltx] quietening lualatex console output

[Hans Hagen]

On 29-1-2011 10:58, Philipp Stephani wrote:

> I think LuaTeX should aim for more sane output in general, similar to other non-TeX compilers. That means:
> - No printing of page numbers (already possible), file names (suggested in http://tracker.luatex.org/view.php?id=535) and similar nonsense. People who are interested in which files are loaded can use the filename recorder.
> - All messages use file:line:message style, even those that come from \write or Lua print() or texio.write()
> - \scrollmode (i.e. no user interaction) by default
> - Primitives or Lua functions for printing errors, warnings and informational messages
> - Getting rid of \errhelp
> - Messages are never broken across lines; every message is exactly one line; newline chars in messages are converted to spaces
> - No continuation of messages
> - No log file
> - Error messages go to stderr
> - No banner
> I don't think this has to be configurable. The current mess probably needs to stay for compatibility reasons, but a command line option --sane-output could be added that switches output to the sensible style GCC and most other compiler use.

Most of the messages are under macro package control so it's not so much 
a luatex issue. As demands differ and there is no universal solution or 
preference, the only thing that the engine will offer is control in the 
form of callbacks (and things like line lengths are already configurable 
for quiet a while for tex engines in conifiguration files). As there's 
also backward compatibility to consider, the default behaviour is that 
of tex. For instance, hard coded output formats of texio.write is not 
going to happen as one can do it anyway by passing the right strings.

(One of our test cases has been is highly structured parsable xml 
logging but I haven't tested it for a while so I must pick it up.)

The traditional tex error message mechanism will be redone when other 
core components are finished doing. Currently they are rather 
interwoven. This will happen in a later stage (around version 0.90).

Hans


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