From: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> |
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To: | pgsql-docs(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org |
Subject: | Remaining PDF layout issues |
Date: | 2020-05-10 21:31:20 |
Message-ID: | 6916.1589146280@sss.pgh.pa.us |
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Lists: | pgsql-docs |
There are something like 140 "exceeds the available area" PDF build
warnings that will remain after the catalog-table reformatting I've
proposed nearby. I've looked through these and they fall into
two groups:
1. We have lots of overwidth examples. Using our standard monospaced
font, A4-size paper has room for lines at most 67 characters long, and
many of our examples blow past that. In practice it seems that FOP will
only complain if there's an uninterrupted run of more than 67 dashes;
otherwise it'll just silently break the lines at some point. (Hence,
almost all the warnings are about EXPLAIN output; other wide examples
tend to be multi-column query results, and FOP will break those header
lines quietly.) So a minimum "fix" to silence the warnings would be to
throw in a &zwsp; to allow breaking those header separator lines. Or we
could just truncate those header lines at 67 characters --- though that
might make the examples look funny in wider windows. However, if FOP is
whining about the header line, that implies that it's breaking some of
the data lines too, possibly rendering the output less readable than one
could wish. Should we worry about that? and if so, what could be done
about it? Since there are lots and lots of places where example text
is getting line-wrapped *without* any nearby warnings, I'm inclined to
write this off as not much of a concern. But if anyone has ideas about
really fixing it, I'd like to hear them.
2. The other category of problems is tables that are too wide. The
hacking I've done to date has fixed that for most tables, but we still
have some individual tables with layout issues:
Table 13.2. Conflicting Lock Modes
Table 26.1. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication Feature Matrix
Table 27.4. wait_event Description
Table C.1. SQL Key Words
The trouble with 13.2 is the column headers. The table cell entries
are just "X"s or empty, but the headers are verbose and do not fit.
Short of a wholesale redesign, the only fix I can see is to abbreviate
the headers. It looks like abbreviating EXCLUSIVE to EXCL might be
enough, though I've not actually tried it. That would be kinda
weird-looking when seen in a window where there's plenty of room,
and as far as I know we can't get DocBook to vary the text based on
output format. Anyone got a better idea?
Table 26.1 has got the identical issue of overly wordy column headers.
TBH, my inclination with this table is not to find a way to fix it
but just to remove it. It looks to me like it's just restating the
material above it, and it's not even a usefully complete summary because
it omits some of the categories (which got kicked to below it, just
because they didn't fit into the table's worldview). I also wonder why
"Commercial Solutions" is a category at all.
Table 27.4 is annoying: it could be made to work, just barely, with some
hacking of the column widths and a &zwsp; or two. But it's not stable
text so I have little faith in the longevity of such a solution,
especially if people keep on inventing long wait event names. I also
find it not very readable, even in a wide window. The first idea that
comes to mind is to split it into multiple tables, one per "Wait Event
Type", so that we don't need the lefthand column. Another idea is to
go over to a format similar to what I've proposed for catalog tables,
with entries like
Timeout / BaseBackupThrottle
Descriptive text here ...
Timeout / RecoveryApplyDelay
Descriptive text here ...
The trouble with table C.1 is that some of the SQL committee's keywords
are too long, even after the hacking I did to give the keywords a wider
column. One wonders why things like "CURRENT_DEFAULT_TRANSFORM_GROUP"
are keywords at all. We could do something with spanspec or morerows
to give those specific keywords extra space, but it would look weird
in renderings where there's plenty of room anyway.
We're within hailing distance of zero "exceeds the available area"
warnings, so I'd like to get these things resolved.
Comments, better ideas?
regards, tom lane
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