Hi,
tex engine provides several compilation modes:
--interaction=STRING set interaction mode (STRING=batchmode/nonstopmode/scrollmode/errorstopmode)
--halt-on-error stop processing at the first error
But it lacks one very important where one could hide
all the output from terminal except errors (when tex waits for stdin).
And tex engine would interact with user by letting him decide what to do next instead of killing at first error or compiling with errors til the end.
For typsetter or a simple tex user terminal messages ar just a "white noise". While there is no errors. It just slows down all the compilation. If there is a lot of messages you can gain several seconds by hiding all the output.
What I want to offer is a new option:
--output-on-prompt=LINES_NO output to terminal only on input prompt (LINES_NO lines of buffered stdout, all of it if 0)
It works like a "batchmode" but pics all the stdout. And when stdin
is required it will print latest nuber of stodout lines (LINES_NO).
After hitting enter (or what ever tex says to do) it will hide the output again till next stdin.
Lets say --output-on-prompt=20 then on error user will see all the error
and can decide what to do next.
We have implemented such a feature to luatex 1.09.2 and it works perfectly. Could we send some how a patch to request implement this feature for future releases? We could provide the code for the latest release.
Thanks, Linas