Re: Documentation weirdness

On Monday, March 2, 2026, Peter J. Holzer <hjp-pgsql(at)hjp(dot)at> wrote:

> On 2026-03-01 19:08:48 -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 6:38 PM Igor Korot <ikorot01(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi, ALL,
> > I'm looking at https://www.postgresql.org/
> docs/current/sql-createtable.html
> > and see some weird stuff.
> >
> > When I try to search for "PRIMARY KEY" I eventually hit following:
> >
> > [quote]
> > PRIMARY KEY (column constraint)
> > PRIMARY KEY ( column_name [, ... ] [, column_name WITHOUT OVERLAPS ]
> )
> > [ INCLUDE ( column_name [, ...]) ] (table constraint)
> > [/quote]
> >
> > Now I want to check what "column_constraint" is.
> >
> >
> > You read in an underscore in the parenthetical that isn't there. That
> said, I
> > concur that using a label here that so closely matches something that
> exists
> > within the page, to mean something else, is just asking for this kind of
> > confusion.
>
> Would it be possible to set (column constraint) and (table constraint)
> in the normal body font instead of monospace? That would make it clearer
> that these phrases aren't part of the syntax but descriptive.
>
>
Not sure, but I don’t like that as the sole solution anyway. Too subtle.
If three words is too long, replacing constraint with variant, instead of
adding it, would suffice IMO.

David J.