record-based log shipping

Hello,

I have a question about log shipping. The documentation from
PostgreSQL 8.4, in section 24.4.4, describes how to archive partial
WAL files by using the pg_xlogfile_name_offset() function, which it
calls "record-based log shipping". Although it seems that this section
of documentation has been removed in 9.0, the capability is apparently
still there. (Of course 9.0 comes with streaming replication, but the
ability to perform archiving this way is attractive as it can be used
to replicate the database to a non-sql data storage system.)

Well, I have successfully written an archiving script to copy the
partial WAL segments as described, but I am confused as to how I would
actually use this data for a recovery.

Section 24.4.4 states that the "restore_command scripts still deal in
whole WAL files, so the incrementally copied data is not ordinarily
made available to the standby servers. It is of use only when the
primary dies — then the last partial WAL file is fed to the standby
before allowing it to come up."

So how would one "feed" incrementally copied partial WAL file data to
a standby (actually a new server used for recovery) as suggested
above?

Thanks.