Re: Need for newbie friendly docs (was Newbie struggling...)

Geoff Caplan wrote:
[I assume you meant this for the list, not just me]
>With 7.1 Postgres has the potential to enter the mainstream and
>compete with MySQL for popularity. But the framework of the docs was
>laid at a time when I guess it was safe to assume that users would
>have advanced *nix skills.
>
>I recently had to ask the list for help to set the $PGDATA variable. A
>number of kind people responded with the answer.
>
>I had consulted the Postges and Great Bridge docs, the archive,
>Bruce's book and three weighty volumes on *nix, and could not find a
>word in any of them that explains how to do this. A single line in the
>docs could have saved this user a couple of frustrating hours. I
>suspect that this is a pretty typical newbie experience with Postgres
>admin.
>
>Of course, this great list is an important resource. But until the
>development team somehow finds the energy to review the docs and make
>them more newbie friendly, I suspect that Postgres will remain a
>platform for the gurus. This is a pity, because 7.1 really rocks and
>deserves to be more widely used.
>
>Or perhaps we will have to wait for a killer newbie book like the Paul
>DuBois book on MySQL - Bruce's book is helpful, but much too thin on
>the admin issues. And because I suspect that Bruce was behind much of
>the docs, it tends to share the same blind spots.
>
>Just the perspective of someone who is having to teach themselves
>*nix/client-server the hard way.

Your question about setting PGDATA was really about setting environmental
variables in a shell; it is only incidental to PostgreSQL. There is an
enormous amount of background knowledge assumed when you document an
application, and this is necessary, or else every document would
become a Windows-like spoon-feeder, which would spend so much time on
basic stuff that it would never cover the real meat.

I'm not sure that it is either possible or desirable for PostgreSQL to
attempt to satisfy a newbie's need for basic training in Unix.

--
Oliver Elphick Oliver(dot)Elphick(at)lfix(dot)co(dot)uk
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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