[SVN] REQ: commands choosing output

[Allan Odgaard]

On Feb 19, 2005, at 19:02, Eric Hsu wrote:

> Perhaps a future TM could let commands set $TM_COMMAND_OUTPUT and tell 
> TM how it prefers to be seen?

Unfortunately I do not think that I can read variables from the process 
after having launched it.

> This might in general be the slickest way for commands to talk to TM, 
> making special shell variables a two-way street.

I would like to introduce something that would allow the command to 
select output, so far I've considered using escape codes similar to a 
real terminal, so e.g. you'd do:

    printf '\033[O:HTML]'

Or similar to set the output to HTML. Though it would require some 
thought before I venture into this -- maybe this could also reduce the 
current clutter I think exists in the “output” popup menu (i.e. too 
many choices IMHO).

So there would be one new choice, namely “interpret stream” (in search 
of a better name), and probably all the variants of insert/append 
selection/document would be removed and would need to be done using 
these escape codes instead (since all but replace document/selection 
are probably rare output options -- and for compatibility I can just 
insert the proper printf sequence when importing old commands that use 
an exotic output form).