To: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
cc: Josh Kupershmidt <schmiddy@gmail.com>,
	pgsql-docs <pgsql-docs@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: explaining "context" column of pg_settings 
In-reply-to: <1292547747-sup-786@alvh.no-ip.org> 
References: <AANLkTi=rY=Ffo3JkU1eKROG0cDnr0PKaejrEbTSjffnu@mail.gmail.com>
	<17754.1292544709@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<1292547747-sup-786@alvh.no-ip.org>
Comments: In-reply-to Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
	message dated "Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:04:17 -0300"
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:58:32 -0500
Message-ID: <1477.1292605112@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> writes:
> Excerpts from Tom Lane's message of jue dic 16 21:11:49 -0300 2010:
>> I did some work on this patch and attach an updated version.  I'm not
>> however convinced that it's a good idea to bury this material in
>> catalogs.sgml --- I think few people ever read that chapter.  Shouldn't
>> we put this into config.sgml instead, somewhere in section 18.1?

> Perhaps we can replace the current "this setting requires a restart"
> boilerplate with "this setting has context foo" in setting descriptions,
> and have a pointer to wherever the description of each context is.

Hm, that's a thought.  I've never been too happy with those boilerplate
sentences, mainly because they are of necessity brief and so don't
really convey all the implications.  "This setting has context foo" is
brief too, but it could be a link to someplace that's more verbose.

If we were starting from scratch I'd want to try to think of some other
word than "context" to use here, but we're probably stuck with that one
because it's what's used in the pg_settings view.

			regards, tom lane