"Phil Holmes" <address@hidden> writes:
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Harkins" <address@hidden>
To: "lily-users" <address@hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 9:36 AM
Subject: Re: "-dshow-available-fonts" vs. UNIX stdout?
On 6/20/12, Ramana Kumar <address@hidden> wrote:
probably lilypond isn't writing to stdout. maybe stderr?
OK, let me refine the question. If it isn't using stdout, is there a
good reason why is it using something else? Or is it just a bug?
hjh
As a general rule, Unix orientated programs direct the main output of
the program to stdout, and other informative messages to stderr. The
main output of lilypond is the pdf, which actually goes to a file.
The informative messages (e.g. a list of fonts) continue to adopt the
principle of going to stderr.
It would be arguable that an explicitly requested list of fonts is not
an "informative message".
For the record: if you call a typical GNU utility with bad options, it
outputs correct usage information to stderr. If, in contrast, you call
it with --help, it outputs correct usage information to stdout.
In the first case, we are talking about diagnostics, in the second case,
we are talking about requested output.
--
David Kastrup