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For testing purposes, I am looking for a comprehensive list of all errors and warnings that TeX, and LaTeX can output. I don't mean errors and warnings produced by all packages, as this would give an ever-changing list, just TeX and LaTeX, which should be stable.

Has anyone ever produced such a list, e.g., for internationalization?

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The way that messages are included in the LaTeX2e kernel means that internationalisation would be very tricky, so listing the messages would not be so helpful. The LaTeX3 approach is different, so in principal the text can be altered. – Joseph Wright♦ Jan 26 at 16:57
@JosephWright Thanks. But i18n was just an example, one could also think of a helper script that detects the errors, and displays a more verbose explanation of the error. – mafp Jan 26 at 17:04
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A quick sweep through latex.ltx reveals 32 occurrences of \@latex@warning and 84 of \@latex@error: probably a few too many for an answer! – Joseph Wright♦ Jan 26 at 17:19
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I just used strings `which pdflatex` to get a list of all strings inside the pdflatex binary. There are the TeX error message included, but the list is 16k of lines, so I don't post it here ;-) – Martin Scharrer♦ Jan 26 at 18:46
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@MartinScharrer the problem with the string pool is that at least for the low level TeX errors they are fragmented within the string pool as they are constructed from bits and pieces – Frank Mittelbach Jan 27 at 9:49
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As David remarked I had some fun documentation all LaTeX (kernel) errors plus some of the most common packages and the most relevant low-level TeX errors in Appendix B of The LaTeX Companion 2ed. This documentation also contains a lot of information on the most likely reasons why and when you would get each error (and sometimes it is really difficult to figure out when this could happen).

If you can read French: the French translation of the book doesn't have this appendix included because of size issues and so it was put online here as a pdf document (60 pages).

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up vote 17 down vote

The fixed strings in TeX itself are handled in an array maintained in the string pool file which I haven't seen since I last compiled TeX last century sometime but there is a copy on CTAN. That is a superset of the (fragments of) error messages, but is what you would want to change if you really wanted to compile a tex with localised messages.

Also the latex companion appendix B has information about latex errors/warnings.

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Whoa, I've never seen: You can now delete more, or insert, or whatever., I can't go on meeting you like this, One of your faux pas seems to have wounded me deeply..., Pretend that you're Hercule Poirot: Examine all clues,, and a whole lot more in this style. – mafp Jan 26 at 17:25
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@mafp readers seeking to delay finishing their thesis may spend a happy hour trying to get all the TeX errors. Some of them are quite hard to get. – David Carlisle Jan 26 at 17:36
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@mafp -- you know you've hit the jackpot when you get "this can't happen". – barbara beeton Jan 26 at 20:10
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@mafp -- some of those strings are responses to "h" (for "help") after the error prompt. some people never see them (not least because the prompt doesn't suggest asking for help). – wasteofspace Jan 27 at 10:51

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