[Proposal] Modify output behavior; optional newlines and icons

[philip]

Applications are finding different ways to insert newlines into messages. The two ways I've seen thus far in real-world Laravel Zero apps:

$this->error("\nFoo\n");

$this->line('');
$this->error('Foo');
$this->line('');

Neither approach seems ideal. Could there be a better way? The following feels right:

$this->error('Foo');

Related and while we're here, what if we could also (optionally) enable icons for these? For example, maybe info() could be configured to prepend (i) or similar so these stand out a little more. For my use case, app output includes stdout from Process commands so prepending icons to Laravel Zero output could make it stand out a bit.

All thoughts and idea improvements are welcome :)

[nunomaduro]

Thanks @philip for this proposal. Since I understood, you propose the following features:

• Add blank line in a clear way: I have proposed that modification on the laravel is core: [5.5] Adds default string value to Artisan line method laravel/framework#22783

• Add icons optionally to methods error(), info(), etc: I have to think about this. But maybe a trait like "WithIcons" could be interesting.

[philip]

I see that PR references newLine() although I still think it feels wrong to write this:

$this->newLine();
$this->error('Foo');
$this->newLine();

Instead of:

$this->error('Foo');

This request was hoping we could optionally automagically wrap output for these commands with newlines without having to add the extra clutter.

[nunomaduro]

@philip What do you mean exactly about that? Because if I type:

        $this->error('First error');
        $this->error('First error');

I will get:

[philip]

@nunomaduro Some people want more whitespace. Here are two Laravel Zero applications in the wild that indicate this:

This wraps with line(''):
https://github.com/jeffochoa/twitter-cli/blob/master/app/Commands/Tweet.php#L63

This wraps with \n:
https://github.com/tightenco/lambo/blob/lampho/app/Commands/NewCommand.php#L96

[nunomaduro]

@philip I understand your point of view. I am ok with the ->newLine option. Thanks anyway! 👍