[pdftex] \tracinglostchars

[Ross Moore]

Hi Jean-François

On 16 Feb 2021, at 12:37 am, jfbu <jfbu at free.fr<mailto:jfbu at free.fr>> wrote:

Hi,
Not sure if right list.
Besides, I am sure this must have been discussed.

Correct on both counts.

These are LaTeX questions, and should be directly to the LaTeX Team,
perhaps through TeX-StackExchange .



Anyway, \tracinglostchars1 is default in LaTeX (ltplain.dtx),
but not extremely useful because the information goes only
to log file and user is not warned.

LaTeX’s attitude is that most users never look at the .log file anyway,
so these no need to worry about this ...


With \tracinglostchars2, also console output gets the info.
But console output is often big. There is no warning at end.

… and all this extra noise would just turn off most users anyway.

Serious users, who are aware of how useful the  .log  file really is,
should have the ability to make adjustments for themselves.

You can always put the directive:
  \tracinglostchars2
in your preamble.
It doesn’t need to be a LaTeX default.


If I execute etex on

\begingroup
\bye


(e)TeX gives very visible warning

(\end occurred inside a group at level 1)

### semi simple group (level 1) (\begingroup)
### bottom level

at end of run.

But a missing glyph in a PDF file is often at least
as much relevant as the above problem from the end
user point of view

Could \tracinglostchars1 by default also print at end of run
to stdout
something such as

There were missing characters. Check the log file.

And of course also \tracinglostchars2

Or let \tracinglostchars3 do that.

I would then suggest macro formats adopt this
by default.

I think the LaTeX guys would say  No !




Best,

Jean-François


Hope this helps.

Ross


Dr Ross Moore
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
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