Hi Michael, On 2014-10-29 at 00:43:55 +0100, Michael Snoyman wrote:
I don't want to make a format proposal yet, just open up discussion on an issue, and see how others feel about it.
As I recently commented on this list[1], the Show typeclass is overloaded with multiple meanings (serialization, debug info, and user-friendly data display). The general consensus seems to be that the official semantics for Show should be for serialization (as paired up with Read).
[...]
I have a possible solution that I'd like to propose as a strawman: add a new method to the Exception typeclass:
displayException :: e -> String displayException = show
As we're having the general problem of 'Show' being abused for pretty-printing, why not rather standardise on a pretty-show/printing typeclass that would not be limited to Exceptions? What am I missing? Cheers, hvr