Re: Parsing config files in a directory

Peter,

> Right, but you'll notice that Josh already got his way into how the
> current postgresql.conf is laid out and how the documentation is
> structured. I can't find anything in the documentation anymore. Just
> as a side note ... when we start giving people new ways to access the
> configuration settings, they might also like a documentation layout that
> matches their thinking.

Yeah, and I'd like to reorganize it again, since "Client connection
defaults" has become the trash-heap of GUCs.

How, exactly, would you "match their thinking?" Whose thinking are you
matching exactly?

The categorization of the GUCs matched *my* thinking as of 8.0. It's
kind of out of date now, but a *lot* of people found it helpful,
especially compared to "historical ordering" which was what we had
before. I've continued to categorize GUCs by functional area in my
tutorials, and literally hundreds of people have found it helpful.

I agree that the Docs need an alpha index of settings as well as the
current categorical organization, but as previously discussed as long as
there are no editors I can use which like our project dialect of SGML,
constructing such an index is going to be up to you.

Or you could order them alphabetically and provide a categorical index
-- that might be better, actually, because it would make it easier to
re-categorize or multiple-categorize. As long as people can look them
up both ways, it doesn't really matter. You're the Doc master, go for it.

I'll continue to release *my* documentation on the GUCs in database
format, which is really the only thing which allows as much flexibility
as needed.

--Josh Berkus