Description

A streams-like utility object used to format messages for display at the console or other selectable ostream object. Messages are given to an Inform object via insertion operators (<<), and the messages are printed out to a provided ostream device, prefixed by a certain string. A special manipulator `sendmsg' is used to signal when a mesage should be printed.

Each Inform object has a current `message level', which is also indicated when the messages are printed out. Routines are provided to set the current level of the Inform object, so that only messages with a level smaller than or equal to the current output level are printed. Levels range from 1 (most likely to be printed) to 10 (very unlikely to be printed). The main use of this feature in VMD is in conjunction with debugging messages, where the level of debugging information can be changed via text commands.

There are four global instances of Inform which are available to the entire program (as long as they include the file Inform.h):

• msgInfo - Generally informative messages.
• msgWarn - Special warning messages, which do not signal an error but warn of some possible problem with the current state.
• msgErr - Error messages.
• msgDebug - Debugging messages. The macro MSGDEBUG() exists which should be used when printing messages to msgDebug; if the macro VMDDEBUG is set during compilation, the debugging messages will be included in the executable. An example of use: MSGDEBUG("This is a debug message" << sendmsg)