logging for the view engine

initial ideas for the view engine. #1563
It's fine to have these TODOs here in the PR as a hint about what's coming, but we don't check TODOs into code. 

Another approach is to base this PR on another branch other than dev. Then you can have access to all of that stuff here, but without it showing as part of the PR. YMMV and do whatever simplifies your life.