Use a logging library

[leotrs]

The first step in this task is to replace print calls with a logging library. The next step is to add logging calls to places that don't have logging yet.

@eulertour mentions both Loguru and the stdlib logging library as options. I'm partial to stdlib logging.

[huguesdevimeux]

I’m too. It would save us from adding other dependencies.
Then do we keep the progressbar ?

[leotrs]

I think the progressbar can definitely stay, I think the progressbar is a good UI addition for users creating their videos. The logging library would be a catch-all ranging from info to users as well as debugging information for developers.

[PgBiel]

+1 for stdlib package. If anyone has more detailed input on this, though, please let us know

[kilacoda-old]

On discord we've settled for using rich. I'll be pushing the changes soon.

[leotrs]

Hi @kilacoda. Apparently, @huguesdevimeux, @PgBiel, and I are partial to the logging lib from stdlib. Can you please briefly summarize the reasons why rich was settled on?

[kilacoda-old]

Well, for one Rich allows us to format messages with more flexibility, such as adding colors to specific log elements (errors, warnings etc.), and makes things in general look better. It also provides its own markup language which can be used to format stuff like the Animation numbers.

Rich has more features too such as progress bars, tables, better tracebacks etc. which may be used later on if we want to say, remove tqdm.

TL;DR It looks good and seemed cool to the other guys so that's why.

[kilacoda-old]

Here's a little example of rich I've used in my manim renderer GUI. Looks better right?

[leotrs]

I do like the idea of handling logging and the progressbar from a single library.

I'm very very wary of using Yet Another Markup Language... but it seems it also supports markdown which is great.

Here is a link for reference.

[PgBiel]

Imo the usage of rich should be optional. We can easily implement colors by ourselves, without requiring yet another dep. We gotta keep those dep numbers down as much as possible. I'm not gonna lie, it looks like a cool lib, but we could do this (or most of it) using only stdlib, and it's not extremely necessary regardless..

[huguesdevimeux]

I agree with @PgBiel. Adding new dep is a bad idea.
But is implementing colors that simple? Isn't that highly platform-dependent?

[SuperMaZingCoder]

@huguesdevimeux I have a library that is around 30 lines. The file only has to be included. It wouldn't be a dependency. (Look at download instruction #1); put the file in the manim-community directory.

@PgBiel Would this be the kind of thing that you were thinking about?

Link: https://github.com/CodeForeverAndEver/ColorIt

If needed, I can update it to include italics, bold, blinking text, etc.

[leotrs]

@CodeForeverAndEver thank you very much! I would be much more comfortable with using a established library such as logging or rich. The main point is that manim is meant to be used by many people, and we would rely on these established libraries' communities in case anything goes wrong with them. We are not really looking to include a new file just for the purpose of coloring log outputs. Please feel free to continue contributing to manim in other ways!