Austin Bingham wrote: [snip]
I think that defining a mandatory set of attributes is going to rub a lot of users (me included) the wrong way. My sense is that we will be better served by a system that let's you dynamically (and easily!) associate attributes with a message. Moreover, it needs to be simple to do that on a global or per entity (e.g. channel, sink, message) basis. We could provide the kinds of formatters you describe with the library as they have obvious general utility.
My main point, though, is that no mandated set of attributes will please everyone and may well be a huge point of contention.
As for optional attributes I think, it's better to leave them on user's behalf since it's too difficult to figure out the correct set of them and implement suitable interface to operate them in the unified and convenient way. But, surely, the library should leave an easy way to implement them.
I agree with this completely, except that (per above) it should apply to all attributes :)
I totally agree to that. Except maybe that the actual log text might be mandatory or at least included by default. Michael