[asterisk-users] Verbose() messages go unnoticed

Steve Edwards asterisk.org at sedwards.com
Sun Jul 26 12:40:46 CDT 2009


On Sun, 26 Jul 2009, Philipp Kempgen wrote:

> Does anybody else have the feeling that custom messages (Verbose(1,...)) 
> do not stand out enough on the CLI?

Yes.

> We're sending messages like "Extension 123 is unknown" to the output and 
> that should tell the user why a call to 123 fails but users frequently 
> crank up the verbosity to 3 or 10 so our messages go unnoticed in many 
> cases.

Your users can change the verbosity?

> My idea was to use terminal escape sequences to make my messages bold 
> and black on yellow background. apps/app_verbose.c:

I'm not a big fan of escape sequences and colors because they mung up 
console log files, greps, text based emails, and not all terminal 
emulators interpret them correctly even if the TERM environment variable 
is set correctly.

I think "indentation" to indicate significance may be better. Currently 
(1.2), verbose() indents based on an optional "level" from 0 to 4 as 
follows:

verbose level 0
  verbose level 1
   == verbose level 2
     -- verbose level 3
        > verbose level 4
        > verbose level 5

with "unspecified" messages displayed as level 0

If "level 0" was indented one more level than 4, your "level 1" messages 
would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb from the fire hydrant of a 
busy console.

Of course, training admins to stop [ab]using "noop()" would be a great 
first step :)

-- 
Thanks in advance,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
Newline                                              Fax: +1-760-731-3000



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