[XeTeX] Overfull boxes return status of 0 in XeTeX

[David Carlisle]

On 13 March 2016 at 08:53, Philip Taylor <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
> A (very) recent discussion on the TeXworks list included the following
> extract :
>
>>>> 6) [new] A test file yields (in the log) :
>>>>
>>>> Overfull \hbox (0.58942pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 20--20
>>>> []\bodyfont brian.smith0000 at btinternet.com[]  |
>>>>
>>>> With "Hide console window" set to either "Automatic" or "On success",
>>>> this error message disappears; could TeXworks detect the presence of
>>>> overfull box messages in the log and treat them as errors ?
>>>
>>> Whether the console is closed depends solely on the exit status code of
>>> the process that is doing the typesetting. It has nothing to do with the
>>> actual log output (or what scripts etc. do with it). If TeX exits with
>>> status code 0, the typeset run is considered a success, otherwise it's a
>>> failure.
>>
>> OK, then I will ask Akira-san to investigate the possibility of returning non-zero when overfull boxen are reported.
>
> Would it be possible to change the behaviour of XeTeX such that it
> returns a non-zero value when overfull boxen have been generated during
> the compilation ?
>
> Philip Taylor
>
>

that would seem rather odd unless you actually made them errors and
stop with a normal
? error prompt etc.

The status code should reflect whether an error is reported so if
there were an option it
should be to make overfull boxes errors, not just to affect the status code.

David