NAME¶
texfot - run TeX, filtering online transcript for interesting messages
SYNOPSIS¶
texfot [
option]...
texcmd [
texarg...]
DESCRIPTION¶
"texfot" invokes
texcmd with the given
texarg arguments,
filtering the online output for ``interesting'' messages. Its exit value is
that of
texcmd. Examples:
# Sample basic invocation:
texfot pdflatex file.tex
# Ordinarily all output is copied to /tmp/fot before filtering;
# omit that:
texfot --tee=/dev/null file.tex
# Example of more complex engine invocation:
texfot lualatex --recorder '\nonstopmode\input file'
Aside from its own options, described below, "texfot" just runs the
given command with the given arguments (same approach to command line syntax
as "env", "nice", "time", "timeout",
etc.). Thus, "texfot" works with any engine and any command line
options.
"texfot" does not look at the log file or any other possible output
file(s); it only looks at the standard output and standard error from the
command. stdout is processed first, then stderr. Lines from stderr have an
identifying prefix. "texfot" writes all accepted lines to its
stdout.
The messages shown are intended to be those which likely need action by the
author: error messages, overfull and underfull boxes, undefined citations,
missing characters from fonts, etc.
FLOW OF OPERATION¶
Here is the order in which lines of output are checked:
- 1.
- If the ``next line'' needs to be printed (see below), print it.
- 2.
- Otherwise, if the line matches the built-in list of regexps to ignore, or
any user-supplied list of regexps to ignore (given with
"--ignore", see below), in that order, ignore it.
- 3.
- Otherwise, if the line matches the list of regexps for which the next line
(two lines in all) should be shown, set the ``next line'' flag for the
next time around the loop and show this line. Examples are the usual
"!" and "filename:lineno:" error messages, which are
generally followed by a line with specific detail about the error.
- 4.
- Otherwise, if the line matches the list of regexps to show, show it.
- 5.
- Otherwise, the default: if the line came from stdout, ignore it; if the
line came from stderr, print it (to stdout). (This distinction is made
because TeX engines write relatively few messages to stderr, and it's not
unlikely that any such should be considered.
Once a particular check matches, the program moves on to process the next line.
Don't hesitate to peruse the source to the script, which is essentially a
straightforward loop matching against the different lists as above. You can
see the exact regexps being matched in the different categories in the source.
Incidentally, although nothing in this basic operation is specific to TeX
engines, all the regular expressions included in the program are specific to
TeX. So in practice the program isn't useful except with TeX engines, although
it would be easy enough to adapt it (if there was anything else as verbose as
TeX to make that useful).
OPTIONS¶
The following are the options to "texfot" itself (not the TeX engine
being invoked; consult the TeX documentation or the engine's
"--help" output for that).
The first non-option terminates "texfot"'s option parsing, and the
remainder of the command line is invoked as the TeX command, without further
parsing. For example, "texfot --debug tex --debug" will output
debugging information from both "texfot" and "tex".
Options may start with either - or --, and may be unambiguously abbreviated. It
is best to use the full option name in scripts, though, to avoid possible
collisions with new options in the future.
- "--debug"
- "--no-debug"
- Output (or not) what is being done on standard error. Off by default.
- "--ignore" regexp
- Ignore lines in the TeX output matching (Perl) regexp. Can be
repeated. Adds to the default set of ignore regexps rather than replacing.
These regexps are not automatically anchored (or otherwise altered),
simply used as-is.
- "--interactive"
- "--no-interactive"
- By default, standard input to the TeX process is closed so that TeX's
interactive mode (waiting for input upon error, the "*" prompt,
etc.) never happens. Giving "--interactive" allows interaction
to happen.
- "--quiet"
- "--no-quiet"
- By default, the TeX command being invoked is reported on standard output.
"--quiet" omits that reporting.
- "--tee" file
- By default, the output being filtered is "tee"-ed, before
filtering, to "$TMPDIR/fot" ("/tmp/fot" if
"TMPDIR" is not set), to make it easy to check the full output
when the filtering seems suspect. This option allows specifying a
different file. Use "--tee /dev/null" if you don't want
the original output at all.
- "--version"
- Output version information and exit successfully.
- "--help"
- Display this help and exit successfully.
RATIONALE¶
I wrote this because, in my work as a TUGboat editor
(<
http://tug.org/TUGboat>, submissions welcome, by the way), I end up
running and rerunning many papers, many times each. It was too easy to lose
warnings I needed to see in the mass of unvarying and uninteresting output
from TeX, such as all the style files being read and all the fonts being used.
I wanted to see all and only those messages which actually needed some action
by me.
I found some other programs of a similar nature, the "silence" LaTeX
package, and plenty of other (La)TeX wrappers, but it seemed none of them did
what I wanted. Either they read the log file (I wanted the online output
only), or they output more or less than I wanted, or they required invoking
TeX differently (I wanted to keep my build process exactly the same,
definitely including the TeX invocation, which can get complicated). Hence I
wrote this.
Here are some keywords if you want to explore other options: texloganalyser,
pydflatex, logfilter, latexmk, rubber, arara, and searching for
"log" at <
http://ctan.org/search>.
"texfot" is written in Perl, and runs on Unix, and does not work on
Windows. (If by some chance anyone wants to use this program on Windows,
please make your own fork; I'm not interested in supporting it.)
The name comes from the "trip.fot" and "trap.fot" files that
are part of Knuth's trip and trap torture tests, which record the online
output from the programs. I am not sure what "fot" stands for in
trip and trap, but I can pretend that it stands for "filter online
transcript" in the present case :).
AUTHORS AND COPYRIGHT¶
This script and its documentation were written by Karl Berry and both are
released to the public domain. Email "karl@freefriends.org" with bug
reports. There is no home page beyond the package on CTAN:
<
http://www.ctan.org/pkg/texfot>.