Why is there NOT a list of Eroor Messages w/Fixes?

Question

It seems to me that many of these Error Codes are pretty well tied into each user. Mine is "Error Code -38 Audio . . . " Why can't there just be a list of these codes and pointers as to where the Error is coming from, such as Mhz of the song not being the default 44.xMhz and being set at 41.xMhz and such? It would make these error messages more (as Steve Colbert would say) "messageyer."
Anyse

Answer 1

While not pretending to defend or justify the problem, usually cryptic system messages are simply because the function that is reporting the error message (i.e popping up the window that states the Error Code -38) is not necessarily the driver/system call (whatever) that is causing the problem.
For instance if I try to save a file to a place where I don't have permissions, the application will attempt to call the 'save' function, the 'save' function tries to write to the disk, the disk then reports that it cannot because the filesystem is not letting me and this simply gets reported back up the chain as error -99 cannot copy file. The error is coming from one place and the 'cannot copy file' is coming from the actual 'save' function (I am of course making these examples up to illustrate a point).
So it can be hard to necessarily give a 'proper' description of a given error if that error is being generated by a driver/system function that is core to the Operating system but shared by different applications.
The best that can be done is to report the 'core' error number and hope that the developer of the application (in this case Logic) is able to match error 38 with something meaningful in a context of its own application.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=9805 for instance gives you the error codes from 0 to -261
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=9804
error codes from -299 to -5553
As far as I can see -38 is a filesystem error
File not open
Now what does that mean?
I have no idea *in the context* of your problem. However this illustrates that -38 is a 'filesystem' error code and not a specific Logic error, which is why Logic cannot give you a nice error message.
I hope that made sense.
PS I work with developers of software and have to field these types of questions myself but I am not a programmer so maybe someone can elaborate further if needed.
P