[NTG-context] texmfstart fails silently on incorrect input

["Guðmundur J. Kristjánsson"]

Hi all.

Just a quick note regarding "silentness" in Context.

I have on two occasions had problems with silent errors:

1) When using the bib module and putting spaces between citation 
variables and their value. For example, doing:

\startpublication[k = ArcticCorsairTrawling,
		  t = misc]

instead of

\startpublication[k=ArcticCorsairTrawling,
		  t=misc]

2) When trying to define an abstract command:
\definestartstop
     [abstract]
     [before={\midaligned{\bf Abstract} \startnarrower[2*middle]},
      after={\stopnarrower \blank[big]}]

In this case the command was defined when I used "...before = ..." but 
did not alter the text in any way.

So after all this rambling I have two questions:
1) Is this silent mode intended?
2) Is whitespace not allowed before or after when defining with or using 
the "=" sign?

Best regards/Kær kveðja,
Guðmundur J. Kristjánsson
gjk at vitum.net | gjk at hi.is |
Tel. +354-893-4444.


Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> when I try
> 
> texmfstart whatever
> 
> nothing happens. Shouldn't a warning or an error be given to say that 
> texmfstart could not find 'whatever'. This will make it easier to 
> detect typos while trying out commands by hand.
> 
> I do get such a message when using texmfstart --verbose whatever, but 
> I think that such a behaviour should be default.
> 
> Hans, is it reasonable to define a method report_error(str) in
> 
> class KpseRemote
>    def report_error(str)
>      $stderr.puts(str)
>    end
> end
> 
> and modify line 2110 of texmfstart.rb to
> 
> def run(fullname)
>      if ! fullname || fullname.empty? then
> %%%        report("the file '#{$filename}' is not found")
>      report_error("the file '#{$filename}' is not found")
> .....
> 
> Maybe there are other places also where an error report will be 
> useful.
> 
> 
> Aditya
> 
> 
> 
> 
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