These are issues of taste. The text of a single mote may be 1024 characters in length. Historically they were kept terse to save storage. This rationale for brevity is no more, I therefore try to provide very full information in error mnotes, including any contextual information that is likely to be helpful.
Macro definitions are often written by programmers who are less accomplished than the programmer who wrote the corresponding macro definition; and it is, I think, his or her responsibility to diagnose any errors, syntactic and semantic, that are accessible, even if the result is longer than it otherwise would be. Brevity may well be the soul of wit, but in this context it is unhelpful. Specifically here, it is my view that if duplication is an error just what hs been duplicated must be made clear, unambiguously so. Our notions of what constitutes 'eye candy' are thus very different. We indeed disagree sharply, but that does not distress me and should not distress you. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
