Re: Options OUTPUT_PLUGIN_* controlling format are confusing (Was: Misleading error message in logical decoding)

On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 9:23 AM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> On 2014-09-18 09:13:48 -0500, Michael Paquier wrote:
>> > On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>> >> Improving the docs here is on my roadmap, but I don't see the benefit of
>> >> this.
>> Btw, I sent a couple of weeks back a patch that was an attempt to
>> improve this portion of the docs, feel free to have a look if that
>> helps :)
>> http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAB7nPqQDxcHNEBhG71nL6jDGQji9m=FQEoOKs1_YLBFSts4Zsw@mail.gmail.com
>
> Uh, I know - I commented extensively on that thread. Your doc patch is
> wrong, so I won't apply it ;) and also can't really use it as a basis...
Fine. No problem.

> I'd understood
> CAB7nPqRCoCrrf84vHrvdRk8+9RGZbRfBkWMri9_79TFkmz41Fg(at)mail(dot)gmail(dot)com in
> that thread to mean we were on one page. But the message referenced by
> you above (sent later) and this discussion seems to indicate that that's
> not the case.

> Do you see the difference between what your doc patch states and the
> explanation I've given nearby in this thread?
Perhaps that's the lack of documentation... Putting on the plugin
developer hat (if there's one), things are not clear for users. And
the thought that a mandatory option value within the plugin that is
only linked to the SQL interface is somewhat non-intuitive. It would
have been perhaps more interesting to allow users to specify a list of
data types that are allowed as output instead. I guess that's just
food for thoughts though...
--
Michael