Make error messages more useful: add a URI

[Greg Hudson]

On 10/01/2014 05:18 PM, Nico Williams wrote:
> The idea is to derive a reasonably stable URI local part from context
> and format a URI.  If a site-local base URI is configured, then that
> should be used, otherwise something like file:///${docdir}/pages/ should
> be used as the base URI.

I am interested to hear other people's opinions on this.

In general I am an error message minimalist; I think error messages
should be useful, but also readable.  I do not generally see URIs or
unique identifiers in the error messages reported by my applications and
tools; in the rare cases where I do, it tends to make me feel like the
application is clunky.

But I am open to the possibility that I'm wrong-headed about this.
Regardless, it would be a lot of work to create a backing set of useful
documentation about each error code or format string.  Often, it's not
possible to provide useful advice without knowing more about the context
which led to the error.