Re: doc/src/FAQ/FAQ.html changes - Mailing list pgsql-patches

Wow, I was laughing all through this.  You had so many good points I
started to think the FAQ was maintained by a monkey, and that monkey was
me.  :-)

I agree with all your changes, except a few.  Let me list those few:

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> * 1.9: Fixed the hyperlink for "TODO" to point to the
>   correct (?) place.

I used to run linkchecker on the FAQ but haven't since the web site
redesign.  Nice catches.

>
> * ?? 1.10: The link to the SQL tutorial at
>   http://w3.one.net/~jhoffman/sqltut.htm is dead. I found
>   another copy at
>   http://www.intermedia.net/support/sql/sqltut.shtm
>   an put that in: but perhaps we should mirror our own copy,
>   if the author agrees?

That old URL goes in and out of visibility.  Let's keep the new one.  I
don't think we can mirror it ourselves.  Let's see if the new URL stays.

> * Many places: fixed incorrect possessive apostrophes, including:
>   DBMS's
>   CPU's
>   fsync()'s
>   assert()'s
>   R-tree's
>   OID</SMALL>'s

Yes, I get that confused for some reason;  don't know why I do it.

> * 1.13 Replaced vague reference to a "bug-template" file
>   with a hyperlink to:
>   http://www.postgresql.org/bugs/bugs.php. Also removed
>   the mailto:bugs link to encourage people to read the
>   guidelines and use the online form. By the way, that
>   page needs to have <title> tags.

CC'ing webmaster --- Vince?

> * ?? 3.5: Moved this paragraph:
>   <p>Inoperative semaphores can also cause crashes during heavy
>   database access.</p> to question 3.4. Is this where it goes?

Yes, copy-paste error.

> * ?? 4.19: Can we not just say something similar to:
>   "use the SQL command 'select version();'"
>    as this is not a psql specific?

Well, it is just better to tell them exactly how to test it.  They can
use other apps too.

> * ?? 1.14: The page linked to:
>   http://openacs.org/why-not-mysql.html
>   which compares mySQL and postgreSQL, is almost 2 years old
>   now, and, as the disclaimer at the top states, is not really
>   fair to mySQL due to its age. Perhaps a newer comparison
>   could be found?

This is a jem that is frequently cited.  Not sure we want to remove it.
Comments?

> * ?? 2.2: The link to
>   http://www.phone.net/home/mwm/hotlist/
>   seems to be down as I write this, but I cannot determine if
>   this is temporary or permanent. If it is still down by the
>   time this is read, we may want to remove this link.

I will check with linkchecker later.

> * ?? The text version seems to have a lot of blank lines which
>   I had to strip out to get it to match the outout of
>   lynx -dump -nolink FAQ.html. For example, the third line
>   of doc/FAQ has 40 blank lines. Why is this?

I don't see that here or in CVS.

> * Put all tags in lowercase for xhtml compliance,
>   added new DOCTYPE and html tags.

Not sure that is a good idea.  I don't want to go out in an advanced
direction with the FAQ, want to make it is simple to render as possible.

I auto-uppercased the tags again to match the HTML version of our docs.
I also found <br /> and <hr /> which htmllint didn't understand and I
have never seen;  changed to <br> and <hr>.

>
> * ?? Perhaps define DBMS somewhere?
>
> * ?? 4.10 It says:
>   "In theory, R-trees can be extended to handle higher number
>    of dimensions. In practice, extending R-trees requires a bit
>    of work and we don't currently have any documentation on how
>    to do it"
>   Is this what they are working on here?:
>   http://rplustree.sourceforge.net/

That is a C version, quite different from doing it in a db.

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Very nice improvments.  You version is now installed as official.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
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