[SDL] I/O problem (stdio and stderr redirection to txt files)

[David Olofson]

On Thursday 17 March 2005 15.33, Tom Wilson wrote:
[...]
> > How about because they do different things?
> > 
> 
> No, I this is the same issue.

No, but they're closely related. :-)


[...]
> Your proposal deals with letting the _developer_ query for
> > error information.
> 
> Yes, it does exactly that.  I think it would be a waste of effort to 
> make a library that gathers the stderr info and displays it.

That's an implementation detail, but yes; there are better ways, at 
least in theory.


> It 
> would  
> be better to reform/patch the current way that error information is 
> obtained in SDL, and then create a library that displays the
> information.

Yes, but SDL is probably the *least* frequent user of stderr/stdout in 
your average SDL application. Having SDL put error messages in some 
place where an application or add-on library could easilly get at it 
would be great, but what about libs and applications that already 
does lots of printing to stdout/stderr?

If we can't redirect stderr and stdout, we should at least provide a 
"lagacy" interface that's compatible enough that one could just 
search'n'replace.

Not saying we should have *only* an stdio style interface. Might as 
well provide some conrol codes for timestamps and such while we're at 
it, but I have a feeling that complicating it too much will just 
result in everyone continuing to (ab)use printf(), for eternal end 
user headscratching. (Frankly, I have a feeling they will anyway, but 
we'll never find out unless we hack this thing. :-)


BTW, I'm thinking that this thing might actually be better off as a 
"throw into project" C file, or static-only lib or something, and 
entirely self-contained... Kinda' silly to have it fail to say 
"Cannot find data files!" just because it can't find it's *own* 
files! :-D


BTW(2), I have a simple printf() style logger lying around, that can 
send plain text, ANSI colored text and HTML to stdout/stderr or to a 
file. Might fit in somewhere, I dunno...


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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