Re: Expanded information template

On 27 March 2010 04:55, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> I just tried to convert the Pgpool-II page, as another example that includes
> almost all the information there, and that didn't go very well.  I think
> that by targeting a template for the entire page, it has gotten a bit too
> complicated in terms of how much wiki-fu is needed to use it right now.  The
> main sticking point for me was getting the "General Information" piece
> filled in correctly, in the middle of the rest of the sections.

Could you elaborate on what it was exactly that you found difficult?
It should have been as simple as a straight copy-paste of the wiki
source from the Slony page, and then just replace the values in there
with whatever was said about pgpool.

Maybe I'm too close to the problem, but I don't see any wiki-fu
required to use the template ... you just separate the arguments with
pipes, right?

> Couple of
> possibilities to make this easier, just to give some ideas on what might
> improve that situation:
>
> 1) Put that one first in the template definition, even if it shows up later.

We can do that, but I'm still pretty fuzzy on how that would help or
what problem it would solve. If the order of arguments differs from
the order of presentation that seems likely to confuse.

> 2) Break that out into its own sub-template

We can do that too. But wouldn't that just make the calling syntax
more complex (calling one template inside another template is messier
than calling one template)?

> 3) Is it possible to name the fields rather than rely strictly on order?
>  I'm concerned that we won't be able to add fields to template later
> anywhere but the end without breaking existing pages.  Having some sort of
> "name=value" orientation would make it more obvious what you were filling in
> too; if that's not practical, maybe the example to copy should suggest how
> to use some sort of comment markup to document what field you're filling in?
>

Keywords would be fine ... I'll update the template to use them and
fix the Slony page.

> Also, one missing entry from there is "Synchronous Replication?", which is
> used in that entry and I think should be mentioned in all of them.  This is
> a good example of (3)--that should go after "Online Provisioning" I think,
> and if you add it to the template now every existing page (just Slony right
> now) would need to be updated.

I'll add it to the template while I'm in there.