From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Message-Id: <201103091608.p29G8wC02127@momjian.us>
Subject: Re: Improve initdb and pg_controldata manual pages
In-Reply-To: <25000.1299686268@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 11:08:58 -0500 (EST)
CC: PostgreSQL-documentation <pgsql-docs@postgresql.org>
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Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > Well, looking at the detailed option list, it looks fine:
> 
> > 	-D directory
> > 	--pgdata=directory
> 
> > It is only at the top where we see the problem because -D/--pgdata is a
> > required argument and there are necessary spaces because we are showing
> > both -D and --pgdata followed by a single argument.  The original patch
> > creator added '=' to be consistent with the syntax used below.
> 
> > The bottom line is that there are many doc cases where this is used:
> 
> > 	-D directory
> > 	--pgdata directory
> 
> > (no '='), so we should decide what we want in the docs.
> 
> Right.  I think it's fine if the syntax summary shows only those cases,
> especially if the detailed option list shows that "=" is possible too.
> What is important to me is that the summary not suggest illegal syntaxes
> to people.

Of course, the open question is do we prefer '=' to be used in the
detailed descriptions.

> > Does professionally produced documentation have as many inconsistencies?
> 
> Hard to say.  We have the problem that our docs were made by a lot of
> people over a long period of time, so inconsistencies are a fact of
> life.  "Pro" documentation might be more consistent if it's written by a
> smaller group of people over a shorter period of time...

We probably have higher quality but lower consistency.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + It's impossible for everything to be true. +