Re: Poll: are people okay with function/operator table redesign?

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: "David G(dot) Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Steven Pousty <steve(dot)pousty(at)gmail(dot)com>, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>, Isaac Morland <isaac(dot)morland(at)gmail(dot)com>, Pierre Giraud <pierre(dot)giraud(at)dalibo(dot)com>, PostgreSQL Developers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Poll: are people okay with function/operator table redesign?
Date: 2020-04-18 20:36:17
Message-ID: 14380.1587242177@sss.pgh.pa.us
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Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 6:30 PM David G. Johnston
> <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> I feel like writing them as:
>> + (date, integer) -> date
>> makes more sense as they are mainly sorted on the operator symbol as opposed to the left operand.

> I thought about that, too, but I think the way Tom did it is better.
> It's much more natural to see it using the syntax with which it will
> actually be invoked.

Just for the record, I experimented with putting back an "operator name"
column, as attached. I think it could be argued either way whether this
is an improvement or not.

Some notes:

* The column seems annoyingly wide, but the only way to make it narrower
is to narrow or eliminate the column title, which could be confusing.
Also, if there's not a fair amount of whitespace, it looks as if the
initial name is part of the signature, which is *really* confusing,
cf second screenshot. (I'm not sure why the vertical rule is rendered
so much more weakly in this case, but it is.)

* I also tried it with valign="middle" to center the operator name among
its entries. This was *not* an improvement, it largely breaks the
ability to see which entries belong to the name.

regards, tom lane

Attachment Content-Type Size
table-9.30-with-names.png image/png 250.5 KB
table-9.30-no-header.png image/png 238.4 KB

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