Description Darin Wright 2003-07-24 08:33:50 EDT

While you're at it, it would be helpful to supply an extension to filter or 
munge the lines being written to the console. Currently you can color the 
lines in a very limited way, and you can get a notification of new lines (to 
create hyperlinks, etc.) but you can't truly filter them. By filter I mean to 
have some code that gets a notice of each line or block of lines, and it can 
decide what the console should really display. You might want to supress that 
line altogether, display it unmodified, or display something else entirely.

Use case: I am writing a plugin that runs an external tool which generates 
lots and lots of output. Some of the output is in a specific format, for 
example ">>>> ...." is output when a new process starts and "<<<< ...." is 
output when a process stops. The .... is info about what the process is 
including the process number so a reader can match them up. I don't want to 
user to see all that junk; I just want to read it and use it to update a view 
or the status line. I want the user to see the other lines though.

Right now I'm using a consoleLineTrackers extension to notice those lines and 
do something with them but the user sees them too.

Another user case: the external tool reports errors in input files using a 
very long nfs mounted UNIX filename which means nothing to the user who is 
running NT. I want to rewrite those error messages into a shorter, hyperlinked 
NT style filename. I can't modify the tool that I'm running. I could run 
another tool that forks the first tool and filters its output but that's a 
pain - I'd rather do it right in the plugin.