Re: "-dshow-available-fonts" vs. UNIX stdout?

[Ralf Mattes]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:14:09 +0100, Phil Holmes wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "James Harkins" <address@hidden> To: "lily-users"
> <address@hidden> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 9:36 AM Subject:
> Re: "-dshow-available-fonts" vs. UNIX stdout?
> 
> 
>> On 6/20/12, Ramana Kumar <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> probably lilypond isn't writing to stdout. maybe stderr?
>>
>> OK, let me refine the question. If it isn't using stdout, is there a
>> good reason why is it using something else? Or is it just a bug?
>>
>> hjh
> 
> 
> As a general rule, Unix orientated programs direct the main output of
> the program to stdout,

Correct.

> and other informative messages to stderr.  The
> main output of lilypond is the pdf, which actually goes to a file.  


The main output of 'lilypond -dshow-available-fonts foo.ly' is
a pdf file? New to me ...
The main output (actually the _only_ output) of such an invokation
is the list of available fonts.

> The
> informative messages (e.g. a list of fonts) continue to adopt the
> principle of going to stderr.

So testing for the existance of a font like
 
 $ lilypond -dshow-available-fonts | grep 'MySwaschiGlyphs' 

doesn't work. (BTW. grepping stderr is almost always a  sign
of bad scripting ...)

 Cheers, Ralf Mattes