For ages now, I've been wishing that pdftex output the non-pdf special it complains about finding. Often it's obvious, but sometimes it's not, and why not report it?

Does anyone see a problem with this? All I can imagine is that scripts trying to parse the output might be unhappy. So we can keep the original error message unchanged, exclamation point and all, and just add the special text.

As in something like the below (not tested). Probably better to truncate the special text instead of printing the whole thing, as it could be annoyingly long, but I'm wondering about the general idea.

Wdyt? --thanks, karl.

--- pdftex.web (revision 791) +++ pdftex.web (working copy) @@ -16257,8 +16257,12 @@ if not (str_in_str(s, "PDF:", 0) or str_in_str(s, "pdf:", 0)) then begin if warn and not (str_in_str(s, "SRC:", 0) or str_in_str(s, "src:", 0) - or (length(s) = 0)) then + or (length(s) = 0)) then begin print_nl("Non-PDF special ignored!"); + print_nl("<special> "); + slow_print(s); + print_ln; + end; return; end; j := j + length("PDF:"); sounds ok to me ... about the length: the first 50 chars probably gfive enough of a clue (are non pdf specials really that large? maybe blobs of

On 1/6/2018 1:22 AM, Karl Berry wrote: ps code but then they have to be collected / collapsed from snippets which is not that efficient) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------