Re: Questionabl description in datatype.sgml

Tatsuo Ishii <ishii(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> In "8.13.2. Encoding Handling"
> <para>
> When using binary mode to pass query parameters to the server
> and query results back to the client, no character set conversion
> is performed, so the situation is different. In this case, an
> encoding declaration in the XML data will be observed, and if it
> is absent, the data will be assumed to be in UTF-8 (as required by
> the XML standard; note that PostgreSQL does not support UTF-16).
> On output, data will have an encoding declaration
> specifying the client encoding, unless the client encoding is
> UTF-8, in which case it will be omitted.
> </para>

> In the first sentence shouldn't "no character set conversion" be "no
> encoding conversion"? PostgreSQL is doing client/server encoding
> conversion, rather than character set conversion.

I think the text is treating "character set conversion" as meaning
the same thing as "encoding conversion"; certainly I've never seen
any place in our docs that draws a distinction between those terms.
If you think there is a difference, maybe we need to define those
terms somewhere.

regards, tom lane