There's an undocumented function that may help to prevent script developers from having to put System.print('myDebugMessage') in your code.

If you have debug active, you may want to use:

System.setDebugMask(4);

which acts like a script trace cause script lines that are executed to be written to the _PS_DEBUG_ widget (from what I can tell, this output is from a hook that Javascript provides to show the current execution unit).

Keep in mind that the above statement will slow performance. So, in a released module, you should always ensure to:

System.setDebugMask(0);

to ensure that only what your module print with System.print('myDebugMessage'); is shown.

In the TCPIPDemo from Barry Gordon (besides Flanagan's book "Javascript, the definitive guide" without doubt our best Pronto programming guide ;-) ) I also saw:
System.setDebugMask(9);

So this leads me to thinking that the parameter can be any value from 0 - 9.
Could somebody explain the use of all (or at least the '9') these parameter values?

There are differenet values, and Philips uses some of them for special internal debugging. Maybe someday Philips will release the information to the general public. I have asked them to, but so far they have been hesitant to do so. I stumbled across "9" and figured out what to do with it and Philips then gave me the final info under NDA. Sorry Centaur, I can not but I will ask Philips again.

Centaur,

As the function name implies, this value is a mask and not a 0-9 value.

The only details Barry and I are at liberty to share (due to NDA) are those available for general use on the device. The only value that you or others can utilize at this point and time is the one I posted above. It does indeed cause lots of information to be dumped to your _PS_DEBUG_ panel and may or may not prove useful.

Lyndel, Barry, thank you for your reply.
Although I do not understand why Philips does not want to share this kind of information...

And indeed I should have recognised the "mask" in the method name :-0

Note: one of the reasons for my question was because I saw this 'System.setDebugMask(9);' in the TCPIPDemo and I did/do not understand what it is doing. And because I did not got any debug info in my panel (proved to be a javascript typo made by me in a tag name) I was wondering if this statement could be the reason.

in conjunction with a tcp/ip demo i wouldn't be too surprised if mask 9 redirects the debug output to some predefined network address or maybe broadcast the thing thorugh the net - i will try this :-D

well - nice idea, but no :)

I have used the setDebugMask and _PS_DEBUG_ but I don't remember seeing any info in it other than my System.print() statements. Is there other information other than System.print() that is displayed?

EDIT :
My apologies - I was using 0x1001 and not 0x0100
Thanks for the correction. That's much more obviously useful.

MVis, obviously you have not tried the mask specified when I opened this thread.

The only mask value that will be noticeable by users is 4.

All, I've asked Daniel to either lock or remove this thread. There is nothing more we can comment on regarding this topic.