Re: context command line interface documentation?

[Hans Hagen <j.hagen@xs4all.nl>]

On 11/12/2019 12:14 PM, Philipp A. wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I want context to shut up, specifically the “mkiv lua stats” at the end 
> are useless to me and make me scroll up for actual error messages, but 
> better would be to just stop after the first error.
> I consulted the --help docs but found them entirely unhelpful. Also 
> there’s no examples. As doing it wrong results in no error message or 
> indeed any kind of effect, I was in the dark.

context --silent -nostatistics

context quits at the first error as recovering is (1) seldom useful, (2) 
can interfere badly with tex/mp/lua and make things worse), (3) context 
tries to show a bit more precise location where the erro comes from (not 
always easy in tex) ... some of these modes originate in paper terminal 
times and it's very unlikely that context will change it's current way 
of doing things

> First I consulted the --help and found: “--silent=list disable 
> logcatgories (show list with --showlogcategories)”. What’s a “list”? 
> comma separated? Do I need string delimiters?

comma separated and only quoted when spaces (as usual with spaces)

> Whatever, executing “context --showlogcategories” tells me the log 
> category “mkiv lua stats” exists, so: “context --silent='mkiv lua stats' 
> doc.tex” does … nothing, the lua stats are still there mocking me.
> 
> OK, let’s do what you do when there’s no documentation; dive in the 
> code: “grep -C3 'batchmode' 
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/context/lua/mtx-context.lua”
> This tells me that there’s a “errorstopmode” in luatex but no way to 
> make the context script invoke “luatex -interaction=errorstopmode”, great.
> Diving deeper, “setblocked” in mtxtun.lua checks if --silent=all is 
> specified, nice! But that affects everything EXCEPT for the “mkiv lua 
> stats”.

grepping for stats will bring you to nostats and nostatistics and 
"context --help --expert" shows that flag too

> Therefore the two most useful ways to run context (--errorstopmode and 
> --silent='mkiv lua stats') seem impossible unless one writes a wrapper 
> script.
> Would be cool to have this fixed. And to have actually useful 
> documentation instead of having to deep-dive into mtxrun.lua.

remarks like the last one are very unlikely to trigger people to write 
additional documentation (a manual or wiki page) ... context comes for 
free, support comes for free ... there is not much one can demand i guess

Hans

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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