[LyX/master] Start reporting missing citations and broken references in LaTeX build.

[Daniel]

On 2020-03-13 17:31, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
> Am Freitag, den 13.03.2020, 17:11 +0100 schrieb Daniel:
>> I am not sure what you mean by "defunc'ed", but doesn't the patch
>> "let
>> users see the results anyway"?
> 
> Yes, but if you have clicked this each time you want to update your
> preview for only a few times, you'll see that this is not a workable
> solution.
> 
>> Alternatively, maybe there could be a setting for the reporting
>> level?
>> Or, maybe reporting could be silenced the two cases you mention?
> 
> Or the feature could be reverted. If there is just an opt-out, I think
> many users will simply be overtaxed. If we keep the feature, I'd vote
> for making it opt-in.

For me, incorrect references are basically the only point where using 
LyX/LaTeX is worse than a WYSIWYG word processor because in the letter 
you are able to more easily spot them in context. Broken and wrongly 
formatted references are one my major source of handing out mistaken 
documents. So, every help I can get to recognize those is very welcome.

I didn't even know that there were warnings in the log when references 
are broken. To make the user aware of the fact that there are such would 
be very helpful, I think.

I don't know how the "let users see the results anyway" is implemented. 
If I would have to click on "Show Output Anyway" in the log dialog, that 
might be a bit taxing. However, if the log just showed up in addition to 
the output that seems fine to me. It might be nice if there where a 
summary about the errors and warnings somewhere in the log dialog, such as

"0 errors, 30 warnings (3 missing citations, 2 broken references)".

An additional extremely helpful cue when scrolling through a document in 
the work area would be color highlighting, I think. For example, for 
missing citations and references (https://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/11503).

Now that I think about it, since LyX is already so good at supporting 
the formatting of references, in almost 100% of all cases, a "Ref:..." 
cross-references means something has gone wrong in my document. The only 
case when I still use these references is because adding multiple 
references in a "Format:..." is still unsupported. But Riki might have 
something in the pipe for that (https://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/10201). 
So, it would be nice if those "unspecified" references could be colored 
as well. As a default, I would suggest some yellowish color (as in the 
warning of a traffic light).

Also, if there was a default format set depending on prefix (none, tab, 
fig, eq, etc.) that would be helpful I think. Maybe one could change and 
add defaults in the settings somewhere? This format will be set when 
using Copy as Reference (https://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/10975) and, 
maybe, when choosing a reference in the cross-reference dialog. And when 
a cross-reference does not match its default, then the inset will be 
colored (yellow by default).

Colors might be formatted through the color preferences, and hence could 
be opt-out as well.

I guess the major alternative that LyX currently has is filtering 
references in the outliner and checking them one by one.

Daniel

> 
> Jürgen
> 
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>>