Re: An improved README experience for PostgreSQL

On 2/28/24 12:25, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
>> On 28 Feb 2024, at 18:02, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 02:46:11PM +0100, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
>>>> On 26 Feb 2024, at 21:30, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>>> Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>>>> I think this would be nice. If the Markdown version is reasonably readable
>>>>> as plain-text, maybe we could avoid maintaining two READMEs files, too.
>>>>> But overall, +1 to modernizing the README a bit.
>>>>
>>>> Per past track record, we change the top-level README only once every
>>>> three years or so, so I doubt it'd be too painful to maintain two
>>>> versions of it.
>>>
>>> It wont be, and we kind of already have two since there is another similar
>>> README displayed at https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/. That being said, a
>>> majority of those reading the README will likely be new developers accustomed
>>> to Markdown (or doing so via interfaces such as Github) so going to Markdown
>>> might not be a bad idea. We can also render a plain text version with pandoc
>>> for release builds should we want to.
>>
>> Sorry, my suggestion wasn't meant to imply that I have any strong concerns
>> about maintaining two README files. If we can automate generating one or
>> the other, that'd be great, but I don't see that as a prerequisite to
>> adding a Markdown version.
>
> Agreed, and I didn't say we should do it but rather that we can do it based on
> the toolchain we already have. Personally I think just having a Markdown
> version is enough, it's become the de facto standard for such documentation for
> good reasons.

+1

Markdown is pretty readable as text, I'm not sure why we need both.

--
Joe Conway
PostgreSQL Contributors Team
RDS Open Source Databases
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com