Tor controller strategy: recognizing log messages

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

(I am mostly thinking of Nick and Matt Edman as the recipients of this,
but I figured or-dev was a fine spot for it in case one of you knows
the right answer.)

Vidalia could become smarter if it read Tor's log messages and interpreted
them better for the user.  ("I know why Tor is giving this error --
I recommend you foo.") The step after this would be to automatically do
something smart when a given event happens.

But the best way to recognize these events right now is to read Tor's
log messages and recognize certain strings.

Is this an ok long-term strategy? I don't really want to write a new
protocol to inform the controller of any event that it might possibly want
to know about (since a good chunk of the relevant events are the ones
we don't realize will be issues). And I sure don't want to standardize
what log messages are given in what situations. But I also want the
flexibility to make Tor's log messages better down the road.

Is there an easy answer?

--Roger