Re: Documentation of server configuration

On Sun, 2004-11-14 at 01:54, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut wrote...
> > I have made an attempt and reformatted the whole section into one big
> > alphabetical list, and while that has obvious drawbacks, I feel that
> > it's already much more usable than what we have now.
>
> I disagree, absolutely and completely.

Unfortunately, I would agree with Josh, even though I strongly support
Peter's motivation.

For me, this section is the No.1 most hit section of the manual. Given
the speed of release of PostgreSQL (==good thing), I regularly refer to
manuals from 7.3, 7.4 and 8.0. Having a different ordering in the
manuals across different versions is somewhat annoying. A third
re-ordering would be just too annoying. People don't "make the change"
from one version to the next, then never refer back to the older
versions. Lets make as few changes as possible, please.

> If you want to fix runtime-config, how
> about an *index*?

Yes, a local index would do. Alvaro's idea is a good-one, but I'd like
it the other way around: Let's keep everything just as it is now, but
ADD an alphabetical list of parameters at the start or end of the
section which uses xrefs. All of the parameters already have xref
targets, so all we need to do is add the alphabetical list.

This way, those familiar and happy with the existing manual will
continue to be familiar and happy. Others wanting speedy access will
look for and use the new access method. I'm both of those.

That gives us many of the benefits that Peter seeks, with minimal
change.

--
Best Regards, Simon Riggs