System Macros/User Interaction

System_Macros

This macro hardly needs explanation. It stops TeX until you input something.

Macros for showing messages. In the multi-lingual modules, we will also introduce a mechanism for message passing. For the moment we stick to the core macros:

\writestring {string}
\writeline
\writestatus {category} {message}

Messages are formatted: the category appears within a fixed number of columns, on it's own, followed by a colon. One can provide the maximum width of the identification string with the macro \statuswidth.

For debugging purposes we can enhance macros with the next alternative. Here debuggerinfo stands for both a macro accepting two arguments and a boolean (in fact a few macro's too).

\debuggerinfo {subcategory} {message}

This message will only be output if \debuggerinfo is true. (it usually isn't). If you need to calculate something to be used inside the message, embrace your calculating code with \ifdebuggerinfo ... \fi.