Re: Cognitive dissonance

John Gage wrote:
> Posters are correctly referred to the documentation as frequently as
> possible. In fact, very frequently. The frequency might decrease if
> the documentation were in plain text. It is easier to search a single
> plain text file than any other source, except perhaps the database
> itself.

In reality searches are being done on the web, which combines the HTML
version of the official documentation with blog posts, presentation
materials, the wiki, and similar other resources. This is why I don't
actually care about a text version of the docs; I've just gotten used to
using Google to search the PostgreSQL documentation. The occasional
time when I know I just want to search the manual instead, I can search
the PDF version. Neither of those are great solutions, but they're good
enough that it's not worth fighting to build a text version over as I
see it. I'd use it if it were around, but there's little motivation for
most of us to work on it.

> Postgres is getting pushed off the map at the low end by MySQL, now
> owned by Oracle.

The dynamics are much more complicated than that. Big MySQL sites are
switching to NoSQL; medium sized MySQL sites are switching to PostgreSQL
to get rid of scaling and reliability issues (I personally have been
seeing a lot of this from Rails installs lately); small to medium size
Oracle shops are switching to PostgreSQL to lower licensing costs.

The idea that plain-text documentation for the database would be a
significant driver in any of these trends would be greatly exaggerating
the significance of a technical detail important to a pretty small
number of people. On my personal list of "things that could be improved
in the documentation", good plain text format is there, but there's a
whole lot of things above it.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.us