Examples of Overleaf users not noticing error messages

Question

I have the impression that a disproportional large fraction of overleaf users don't notice error messages, a typical comment stream often goes like:

Question: Why is the image placed incorrectly?

me: Can you add a MWE

OP: sure, here is the overleaf link: ...

me: Your example code does not compile and results in error messages about Undefined control sequence. You need to define \foo

OP: My code does not have errors. Look at the overleaf link, it compiles fine

me: Just because overleaf is exceptionally good at hiding error messages, does not mean that there are no error messages ...

The above dialogue is fictional, but many of you have probably experienced similar situations.

I think there might be some possibilities to tweak their UI to make users more aware of error messages (maybe some dialogue message "there are errors - go back to editor to fix or ignore and show pdf", just a quick idea off the top of my head).

Now it probably won't make much impression on overleaf if a none customer like me writes them "I have the impression your users are unaware of errors", but if there would be a list of questions which demonstrates this problem, maybe the impact would be higher. Unfortunately it is hard to search for this on the main site, because this problem is often discussed in comments and the questions are (correctly) not tagged with overleaf, because the tex problem is unrelated to the platform used.

Please help me to compile a list of questions, which were caused or made more complicate to solve because the OP did not notice error messages on overleaf

(my plan would be to collect examples over the next month or so and depending a bit on how many are found until then, write to overleaf)

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I know that also many users of editors like texstudio ignore error messages, but I have the impression that most of them are aware that there are some red messages highlighted at the bottom left, they just argue that "the pdf looks fine" and ignore them anyway, which is equally bad, but another problem.

Answer 1

Overleaf and ShareLaTeX recently merged into Overleaf v2. Before the merger, errors on Overleaf looked like this:¹

There's a big red rectangle with the error message over the problematic line.

Errors on ShareLaTeX looked like this:²

This shows a red box with a white cross in it next to the line number. The error message shows as a tooltip. The right panel shows more detail.

Since the merger, Overleaf v2 has adopted the ShareLaTeX approach of showing a red box with a cross in it next to the problematic line with the mouseover message, shown below:

Moving the mouse over the red box shows the error message. The "logs and output files" button has a red box with the number of errors in it (1 in this case). Click on that button to show more details.

Warnings show up as a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside it and the number of warnings shows up in an orange box over the "logs and output files" button.

Where there are both warnings and errors, the total number is shown in a red box over the "logs and output files" button.

If you click on the "logs and output files" button then a summary of the errors and warnings is displayed.

So the new v2 interface has the more discreet ShareLaTeX style of alerting users to a problem, but if you do notice the little numbered box over the "logs and output files" button and click on it, then it does actually provide some useful information for a beginner who may find the usual LaTeX messages a bit baffling.

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¹Image taken from Figure 13.8: Overleaf — Error Handling.

²Image taken from Figure 13.9: ShareLaTeX — Error Handling.

Answer 2

List of questions, which were caused or made more complicate to solve because the OP did not notice error messages on overleaf:

• Put 2 logos (left and right)
• How to make a pgfplots barplot not fuse with the y-axis?
• Position library does not work in Overleaf

Overleaf users which are aware of error messages but ignore them:

• Submitting paper to arXiv

Overleaf users not getting an error while there is an error on standard LaTeX installations:

• todo notes inside tcolorbox

Answer 3

Not only questions but also answers.

Here both Dũng Vũ and I didn't notice the error: Put additional features for elementary row operations in latex.

Overleaf shows this:

Only if you click on "Logs and output files" and then on "View Raw Logs" you'll see it: