Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>Once you know where to look for stuff it isn't that hard to find things.
>
>
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Yes, but what happens where you don't know where to look for stuff?
>This is one of the advantages of reading through the whole manual once
>to get an idea of whats there.
>
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Sure, but who has time to read through a whole manual first? No system I
ever learned had me do that.
>When I need to look things up for Postgres I use a local copy of the web
>based documentation.
>
>
A good idea. But If you work for different locations (home, client's
office, office), then that becomes redundant. Besides I would be
responsible for syncing the manual from PG to each location. Besides, a
local copy would not usually have a search engine built in.
>I don't like this. It will make scrolling through a group of related
>functions harder. Name anchors can be used to allow links directly to
>functions.
>
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Nope. I disagree with this one. It makes finding stuff easier if you
type "nextval()" into a search engine, and it takes you directly to the
nextval page.
>Do you see these two points as applying to only the copy of the
>documentation on the Postgres web site, or do you see this being distributed
>either with the database (as the current documentation is) or as
>a separate item (like some of the clients are)?
>
>
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In this case, documentation on the website should always be primary.
Almost anyone working on modern software is always connected to the
internet. A static copy of the interactive documentation can always be
distributed with the software. But do many people even refer to the
included documentation? To be honest, I dont. The documentation in psql
(eg: \h COPY) is as far as i'll go, the next step in the main site, or
google. Why rely on documentation on your hard disk that will get out of
date soon anyway?
- Ericson Smith
