From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
cc: piotrowski@prisma.io, Pg Docs <pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org>,
        "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: "GIN and GiST Index Types" page is about usage in full text
 search, but looks general purpose
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Comments: In-reply-to Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
	message dated "Tue, 12 Apr 2022 12:53:23 -0700"
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Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 16:28:47 -0400
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Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> writes:
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 12:49 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> I think we should take the index type names out of the section title
>> entirely, and name it something generic like "Preferred Index Types for
>> Full Text Search".

> Agreed.

Proposed patch attached.  The existing text already says "GIN indexes are
the preferred text search index type", so I'm not sure we need to go
further than that about guiding people which one to use.  In particular,
since GIN can't support included columns, we can't really deprecate GiST
altogether here.

> There is always the extreme option of excluding older versions in
> robots.txt. I bet that would work.

Yeah, I was wondering about that too.  It's sort of the nuclear option,
but if we don't want to modify EOL'd versions then we may not have any
other way to keep Google from glomming onto them.

			regards, tom lane


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diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/textsearch.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/textsearch.sgml
index 20db7b7afe..6afaf9e62c 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/textsearch.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/textsearch.sgml
@@ -3618,7 +3618,7 @@ SELECT plainto_tsquery('supernovae stars');
  </sect1>
 
  <sect1 id="textsearch-indexes">
-  <title>GIN and GiST Index Types</title>
+  <title>Preferred Index Types for Text Search</title>
 
   <indexterm zone="textsearch-indexes">
    <primary>text search</primary>
@@ -3627,10 +3627,16 @@ SELECT plainto_tsquery('supernovae stars');
 
   <para>
    There are two kinds of indexes that can be used to speed up full text
-   searches.
+   searches:
+   <link linkend="gin"><acronym>GIN</acronym></link> and
+   <link linkend="gist"><acronym>GiST</acronym></link>.
    Note that indexes are not mandatory for full text searching, but in
    cases where a column is searched on a regular basis, an index is
    usually desirable.
+  </para>
+
+  <para>
+   To create such an index, do one of:
 
    <variablelist>
 

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