Re: Viability of text HISTORY/INSTALL/regression README files (was Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Document a few more regression test hazards.)

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 1:38 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Noah Misch <noah(at)leadboat(dot)com> writes:
>>> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>>> I wonder if these standalone things are really worthwhile.
>
>> I wonder how difficult it would be to make sufficient link data available when
>> building the standalone files. There would be no linking per se; we would
>> just need the referent's text fragment emitted where the <xref> tag appears.
>
> IIRC, that's basically what the "workaround" is, except it's not very
> automated. Even if it were automated, though, there's still a problem:
> such links aren't really *useful* in flat text format. I think that
> forcing the author to actually think about what to put there in the
> flat text version is a good thing, if we're going to retain the flat
> text version at all.

Right. I mean, a lot of the links say things like "Section 26.2"
which obviously makes no sense in a standalone text file.

I agree with your comments upthread: INSTALL *might* still be useful
to somebody, but I would be pretty surprised if anyone uses HISTORY or
regress_README for anything any more.

--
Robert Haas
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