[pdftex] structure destinations in the log

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 27 Dec 2022 17:16:02 +0000 schrieb Jonathan Fine:

> Hi
> 
> The command \showoutput gives a representation of the box that is
> \shipout'ed. In Don Knuth's TeX, that representation is largely sufficient
> to determine the page that is output.

 
> I fully support Ulrike's request, and thank her for noticing and reporting
> to us that pdftex does not behave in a similar way.

I didn't asked for it to "determine the page output", I only wanted
a bit less confusing logs in the test suite.

Lots of things that pdftex does leave no trace at all in \showoutput
as they don't use whatsits e.g. reserving and writing of objects, of
catalog values, of page resources etc. And even for the things like
\pdfdest or \pdfliteral you merely see (as with \special too) the
_instruction_ for the backend. Even if \pdfdest will now print also
the object number of the structure: to see which object that is you
have to check the PDF.



-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/