Keep adding prefixes makes the actual log message harder to read. I see we add another 15 characters prefix.
WDYS if we don't make any fixed prefix? If some category has 10 characters, we write 10, if another 4 we write 4.

And I'd suggest removing []. The reason is, it makes easier to parse logs, simply split by space delimiter. In case when we don't have a category, then I'd print 2 spaces (it doesn't violate parsing rule)

that's does not have anything to do with this pull request, open an issue for this.

I for one find log messages easier to read if they are aligned column wise (way easier).

it's related as after this PR, significant part of the debug.log (and screen) will be filled with metadata (prefixes)

I also find it easier to read vertically aligned logs. And without the delimiter it could become less readable.

I don't think it will always be aligned, for instance when someone shares logs via email or another channel and they use a different font. Then these extra spaces will be at least annoying. Or the person who shares logs will manually remove them as you did in the description to this PR

I ran out of arguments, so feel free to keep it as it is if it's not convincing.
Unless others want to add smth: @cornelius @Gnappuraz @AM5800 @frolosofsky

The description of this pull request is a nice example how vertical alignment breaks down. I personally do not care too much about log formatting as long as the information is there and it's machine-readable. Then you can always post-process it to make it more beautiful or align it to your needs.

I'd avoid fixed prefix sizes for the reason mentioned below.

I wouldn't. Logs are horrible to read if not aligned.

For me, this table-view looks nice only from a distance, but once I start reading the actual content, extra whitespaces make it harder + it causes more logs to be split by multiple lines on a small screen. Also, it makes harder to parse.

This is a tooling problem (I use vim/less for unwrapping logs often), also I believe some terminals allow you to disable wrapping.

I do not think that vertical alignment is a real problem except for some specific fields like timestamps, log type and "module". If the module name (or prefix as is named here) has a variable length and the log message starts at a different column is not very problematic since we have the ability to use/create proper tools to deal with these logs.

@kostyantyn Why don't you open up an issue for this. I can imagine a bunch of creative ways of fixing this. Ofr example have an option to emit structured output, json for example; or by specifying the formatting in a sprintf style kind of format on the command line, etc. etc.

I started with the comment as it was related but I am OK to move it to a separate issue/PR and discuss it separately. And I don't see this discussion as a blocker to merge this PR as extra meta information can be disabled.