To: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
cc: PostgreSQL-documentation <pgsql-docs@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Improve initdb and pg_controldata manual pages 
In-reply-to: <201103091551.p29FpW126215@momjian.us> 
References: <201103091551.p29FpW126215@momjian.us>
Comments: In-reply-to Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
	message dated "Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:51:32 -0500"
Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:57:48 -0500
Message-ID: <25000.1299686268@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

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 necesary 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.

> 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...

			regards, tom lane