Unnecessary warnings when generating HRG-entries for abbreviations

[RieksJ]

The TEv2-specifications uses 2 converters for generating its glossary: one for all terms in the MRG, and another one to sift out the abbreviations. The latter converter doesn't produce output for MRG entries that have an empty, or non-existent glossaryAbbr field, which is intended behavior. However, the HRGT does see that, and issues a warning (which would be helpful in other situations, but not in this one.

What are realistic, easy to implement possibilities for having a specific converter not generate such warnings?

[RieksJ]

Apart from this, in the log of the HRGT (and my guess would be that also holds for the TRRT), it is not clear which converter is generating a warning/info message. That would be really helpful.

So:

• What are the possibilities for having a converterspec say that it doesn't need to generate a warning when it produces the empty string as output;
• When a converter is producing a log line, it should be clear from that log line which converter does that.

[Ca5e]

Giving some ideas here.
I suppose a solution would be to implement the built-in Handlebars helper log to have an option {{log level="silent"}}, that would somehow silence the warnings. This way we can also use tslog (the logger we use throughout the project) to log the errors instead of using the default that Handlebars uses to log to the console.
Another option would be to remove the warning by default and add a check that can trigger the log helper, something along the lines of: {{#ifValue ??? equals="???"}}{{log "Conversion of entry '" {{termid}} " using " err.converter " did not fill in any expression" level="warn"}}{{/ifValue}}.

[RieksJ]

Thanks for theses ideas. Pondering a bit about them, and the contexts in which they would be used, I would think that in cases where people are not that experienced with the tool, they would want to see warning messages (as we (I?) did at the start). Those that are sufficiently experienced that they know how to deal with converters etc. could use the first suggestion, ({{ log level="silent"}}), which for them would be easy enough to understand and use. I didn't know you could actually add such functionalities to built-in helpers, but if that's possible, then

• pls implement the {{ log level="silent"}} feature and
• update the documentation on the helper functions accordingly.

[Ca5e]

@RieksJ could you check if the documentation of the log helper function matches your idea of the implementation?

[RieksJ]

@Ca5e I've rewritten it a bit:

• added texts regarding its purpose (what you can do with it);
• attempted to write texts that won't put off non-developers
• changed the examples - it seemed as if your examples didn't work (a <level> should be preceded with level=, right?)
  Can you review, correct any mistakes, and close this issue?

[RieksJ]

@Ca5e : can you check the boxes in this comment insofar appropriate (pls. check the texts I've redone, particularly for the log helper for correctness (and understandability)).

[RieksJ]

I have modified the HRGT converter configs of the tev2-specs repo to read as follows:

I would expect that adding the {{else}} clause in converter[2] would get rid of the logs, but it doesn't...