Re: texi2any "SILENT" variable appears to do nothing

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 01:36:00PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> I found that SILENT was reported as missing in one of the check scripts
> under doc/refcard:
> 
> make vcheck:
> 
> man only   1: SILENT
> 
> txivarcheck was changed to ignore this variable in texi2any on
> 2024-04-06 (fdc9653fa8adf13a):
> 
>     * doc/refcard/txivarcheck (read_tp): filter out the 'SILENT'
>     customization variable that is not interesting to document as it does
>     nothing, and the customization variables starting with XS_ that are
>     not documented on purpose.
> 
> SILENT is still documented in the manual as equivalent to --silent.  However,
> it does not work.  For example,

Customization variables are ignored in general for texi2any calls of
texi2dvi/texi2pdf (except for TEXINFO_OUTPUT_FORMAT, I guess).  So, the
fact that the second call with -c SILENT=1 prints all the output from
pdftex is not really a bug.

For example:
 ../tp/texi2any.pl --pdf -c DEBUG=1
will only print debugging output for texi2any, but will not transmit
--debug to texi2pdf.

It is said explicitely in the manual for "Customization Variables for
@-Commands":

   Note that if ‘texi2any’ is invoked to process the file with TeX
 (e.g., with the ‘--pdf’ option), then these customization variables may
 not be passed on to TeX.


> ../tp/texi2any.pl --pdf --silent ../doc/info-stnd.texi
> 
> prints nothing.  But
> 
> ../tp/texi2any.pl --pdf -c SILENT=1 ../doc/info-stnd.texi 
> 
> prints all the output from pdftex that you would expect.
> 
> I am going to try to remove this variable and any mention in the 
> documentation.

Since the --silent command line option is ignored in texi2any no problem
for me to remove the SILENT variable.  I do not remember if it was Karl
or my decision to have this variable as customization variable for
consistency.

-- 
Pat