Re: Proposed patch - psql wraps at window width

* Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> [080424 23:14]:

> Well, I was going to bring up changes to the default after the patch was
> applied but I will bring it up now. I think there is some real
> attractivness to having long values wrap to fit on your screen in
> interactive mode. In fact, it is hard to justify our current
> interactive behavior of a row just overflowing the screen width and
> moving to the next line. We have gotten used to it, but it is certainly
> not very user-friendly.

-1.

Personally, I don't ever want to see that wrapped format.

<opinion valid="maybe not">
That wrapped format is more user-unfriendly than the long lines, which
are at least easily understandable.
</opinion>

So add a wrapped format, because obviously some people want it, but in a
similar vien to the making psql have no banner by default, I think
making wrapped format the default will cause much user consternation.

In Bruce's sample, even with the rules "right there", I still had to
look at the query to try and figure out what each data piece actually
was.

But I have to admit, trying to get a generic multi-column "wrapped"
format is a hard task. I couldn't come up with a scheme for showing it
easily myself on my (discarded) attempt to reply to the sample output.
Anything that *doesn't* have a wrapped line end with \ and then continue
with a > is going to feel awkward to me, and I'ld rather just have the
long lines, because having a one-off, complicated display format in
psql, even though it could technically define exactly what the data is
it's trying to display, if it's different from everything else means I'm
going to avoid it as much as possible.

a.
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