Jack Moffitt pisze:

twistd(1) starts logging automatically, giving you a command line option to
redirect the logs to a file.


Yes I know.  And it has lots of information in those logs that I care
nothing about, and no way to filter them without doing a lot of
subclassing.

log.addObserver

Standard python files are not good user interfaces.  Sorry.  I realize
I have to copy some stuff twistd does, but if my goal is to make
friendly software, then that's what I have to do.

Why won't you write an opensource GUI for twistd(1) then? You could release a simplified version for your end-users then.

At the moment, twistd(1) on my machine allows me to run 17 different services, including mail, web, ftp and ssh. If it's good for running those, I don't see why your code couldn't be made compatible with it.

tac files are configuration files. If I have to load configuration
files in the configuration file, isn't that defeating the point?

I don't know, what platform are you running? chmod +x and shebang should do the trick on some, so you will have an executable configuration file, how about that?

That's the whole
problem I'm trying to solve here in the first place.  twistd cannot
take arbitrary command line options,

twistd can do that, just add a plugin for it:
http://twistedmatrix.com/projects/core/documentation/howto/tap.html

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m