[racket-dev] Error message structure (error-message overhaul)

On 06/19/2012 06:11 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>    * There are two contexts where error messages are unwieldy: TR and
>      contract errors.  In both of these the error text is huge to the
>      point of making a useless text that you need to manually grep
>      through.  In TR it got bad enough that Vincent put some serious
>      effort in making them shorter, and with contracts the problem is
>      still there (though not as bad as TR was).  This was something
>      that we talked about at some point -- consider a very likely
>      mistake:
>
>        (plot sin)
>
>      This results in more than 80 lines of an error message, getting
>      the "TR effect" where in drracket you're now staring at the
>      bottom of that goop and have no clue what to make of it.

Hear, hear! I make this mistake myself after going a month or two 
without plotting anything. Every time, I've dreaded some possible future 
in which I do it in front of a non-Racketeer.

I've not dreaded it enough to chuck the contract system in plot, though 
I've been close.

Neil ⊥