Adding comments for system table/column names

There was a thread in January of 2012 where we discussed the idea of
pulling system table/column name descriptions from the SGML docs and
creating SQL comments for them:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2012-01/msg00837.php

Magnus didn't seem to like the idea:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2012-01/msg00848.php

Well, I'd expect some of those columns to get (at least over time)
significantly more detailed information than they have now. Certainly
more than you'd put in comments in the catalogs. And having some sort
of combination there seems to overcomplicate things...

I think the idea of having the short descriptions in SQL and longer ones
in SGML is not maintainable. One idea would be to clip the SQL
description to be no longer than a specified number of characters, with
proper word break detection.

Here is how psql displays column and table comments:

test=> create table test(x int);
CREATE TABLE
test=> comment on column test.x IS 'wow';
COMMENT
test=> \d+ test
Table "public.test"
Column | Type | Modifiers | Storage | Stats target | Description
--------+---------+-----------+---------+--------------+-------------
x | integer | | plain | | wow
Has OIDs: no

test=> comment on table test is 'yikes';
COMMENT
test=> \d+
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner | Size | Description
--------+------+-------+----------+---------+-------------
public | test | table | postgres | 0 bytes | yikes
(1 row)

Should I continue working on this patch?

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +