I think in practical terms for IDE-based people, a short standardised alphanumeric identifier makes sense. These typically get displayed along with the full error text in the error pane, and it helps to be able to allocate a known, standard amount of real estate to them.  Fundamentally they are just an index into something else, you will either copy/paste it, or click on it.

Alan

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 at 20:16, Jakob Brünker <jakob.bruenker@gmail.com> wrote:

For what it's worth, there is an existing proposal about this topic, maybe that's the right place to discuss it for a user-focused perspective.

See https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/325

Jakob

On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 9:10 PM Tom Ellis <tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2017@jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 02, 2021 at 07:03:25PM +0000, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
> > To me this seems like a rare opportunity to do something where people
> > will say "Hey look, that formidable Haskell compiler is doing
> > something that's friendlier than the equivalent in any other
> > compiler!".  For such an important user-facing feature I don't
> > understand why we're not asking users what they prefer.
>
> I agree completely here! Let's ask! (Remember that this thread,
> posted to ghc-devs, was originally about documenting the GHC source
> code, something that would not affect users.)

Yes indeed.  Let's one of us start a user-focused thread elsewhere
(whoever gets round to it first) and post a link here so interested
parties here can join in.

Tom
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