Thread: Re: TOAST versus toast
Hi, If I understand correctly, the summary is: - Tom: +1 for "TOAST table", but changing all the combined forms is maybe not worth the effort. - DavidJ: Wants to uppercase TOAST only when it refers to 'technique'; lowercase otherwise. - RobertT: The verbs should be lowercase (e.g. laser). Each-way bet re David's technique idea. - RobertH: Don't lowercase verbs, but instead try to rewrite these differently where possible. ~~ This thread seems to have exposed a lot of different opinions. I guess that's the reason why the docs/comments got to be how they are now -- e.g. Everybody wrote what they believe is correct, but their idea of correct differs from the next person. BTW, this thread was not created because of any particular confusion it was causing (although I am sure there are some confusing examples to be found). It was more just that during reviews I kept seeing there was no consistent use of toast v TOAST even in the same file/function. It was this inconsistency that was annoying and prompted this thread. But, because of all the differing views expressed here I'm not sure now how to proceed. Any ideas? I think everyone would agree that inconsistency is bad, so it becomes a question then what if anything should be done about it. My plan was to just come up with some fixed rules for mechanical changes (e.g. "Always say TOAST table" or whatever). I know that may not always result in the perfect choice, but IMO having some simple/fixed rules for a code monkey to apply might be more prudent than rules requiring subjective interpretations (e.g. will two people ever agree what is a 'technique' and what is not?) which would end up not addressing consistency issue. Also, I agree that just rewriting text would be the best choice in some cases but probably there are many dozens of candidates so getting consensus on all of those rewrites will be like herding cats. Meanwhile, I've moved this CF entry into the next commitfest, because I don't see how this thread can get resolved by the end of the month. ====== Kind Regards, Peter Smith. Fujitsu Australia
On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 7:38 PM Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> wrote: > If I understand correctly, the summary is: > - Tom: +1 for "TOAST table", but changing all the combined forms is > maybe not worth the effort. > - DavidJ: Wants to uppercase TOAST only when it refers to 'technique'; > lowercase otherwise. > - RobertT: The verbs should be lowercase (e.g. laser). Each-way bet re > David's technique idea. > - RobertH: Don't lowercase verbs, but instead try to rewrite these > differently where possible. I'm not sure I agree with this summary of my position. I'm against TOASTed, TOAST-able, and un-TOASTed, and in fact it seems to me that nobody else who has commented on this proposal likes those either. It seems to me that the idea of upper-casting TOAST where it stands alone as a separate word may have some support, although not everyone who has commented wants to do it in every situation and nobody seems to think it is super-important. But as far as I can see, nobody other than you is a fan of doing it when a prefix or suffix has been added. I don't mean to suggest that your opinion is unimportant, just that, in this case, it doesn't seem to have attracted any support from others. So I would suggest that you either: (1) drop this patch, or perhaps (2) cut it down to something that just changes some or all usages of TOAST without prefix or suffix and leaves everything else alone, or perhaps (3) do (2) but also add some rewording to (3a) avoid needing to use prefixed or suffixed forms or (3b) to avoid using TOAST altogether. I really don't think you're going to get consensus on capitalizing the letters TOAST someplace in the middle of a word. I mean, there's probably precedent both ways. You get tasered by the police, not TASERed by the police; but I think you would write that you were SMSing with a colleague rather than smsing with a colleague. But as you say, "everybody wrote what they believe is correct," so there is probably not going to be support for radically upending our existing conventions, and deTOASTing is definitely a minority position. If you really want to change something, getting rid of the few instances of minority positions like that might be palatable, but something that involves replacing a lot of the forms people chose with other forms seems less likely to achieve consensus. The alternative of just not worrying about it too much also seems to have some merit. As you say, you weren't actually confused, just irritated by the inconsistency; and spending effort on things that are more irritating than serious is not always the right thing to do. -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
On Sun, 16 Mar 2025 at 19:38, Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> wrote:
But, because of all the differing views expressed here I'm not sure
now how to proceed. Any ideas?
May I suggest that you start with a patch to Appendix J, section 6 to codify whatever is decided?
This is made a bit awkward because right now the style guide only has one subsection, relating to reference page organization. So essentially I'm suggesting an entirely new subsection which could eventually cover things like capitalization and which grammatical forms to prefer, and that you start with the toast/TOAST rules. Once you have at least one rule agreed and added to the style guide, then a patch to revise existing examples of contrary usage would be in my opinion a more clear win than it is now.
The above makes more sense to me if there are other questions of this general nature that could benefit from an explicit mention in a style guide, even if this patch wouldn't do that. If this is the only question like this, then it looks a bit weird to add a whole section just for it. But I lean towards the idea that over time there might be a number of decisions of this nature that ought to be made and followed consistently.
On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 1:50 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 7:38 PM Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> wrote: > > If I understand correctly, the summary is: > > - Tom: +1 for "TOAST table", but changing all the combined forms is > > maybe not worth the effort. > > - DavidJ: Wants to uppercase TOAST only when it refers to 'technique'; > > lowercase otherwise. > > - RobertT: The verbs should be lowercase (e.g. laser). Each-way bet re > > David's technique idea. > > - RobertH: Don't lowercase verbs, but instead try to rewrite these > > differently where possible. > > I'm not sure I agree with this summary of my position. I'm against > TOASTed, TOAST-able, and un-TOASTed, and in fact it seems to me that > nobody else who has commented on this proposal likes those either. It > seems to me that the idea of upper-casting TOAST where it stands alone > as a separate word may have some support, although not everyone who > has commented wants to do it in every situation and nobody seems to > think it is super-important. But as far as I can see, nobody other > than you is a fan of doing it when a prefix or suffix has been added. > I don't mean to suggest that your opinion is unimportant, just that, > in this case, it doesn't seem to have attracted any support from > others. Sorry if I've misrepresented your position. And, just for the record, I'm not "a fan of doing it [capitalizing] when a prefix or suffix has been added". I know in earlier posts I may have suggested doing that, but that was me trying to be consistent with usage on the docs page [1] which I originally took to be the gospel for all these TOAST related words. > > So I would suggest that you either: > > (1) drop this patch, or perhaps > (2) cut it down to something that just changes some or all usages of > TOAST without prefix or suffix and leaves everything else alone, or > perhaps > (3) do (2) but also add some rewording to (3a) avoid needing to use > prefixed or suffixed forms or (3b) to avoid using TOAST altogether. > > I really don't think you're going to get consensus on capitalizing the > letters TOAST someplace in the middle of a word. I mean, there's > probably precedent both ways. You get tasered by the police, not > TASERed by the police; but I think you would write that you were > SMSing with a colleague rather than smsing with a colleague. But as > you say, "everybody wrote what they believe is correct," so there is > probably not going to be support for radically upending our existing > conventions, and deTOASTing is definitely a minority position. If you > really want to change something, getting rid of the few instances of > minority positions like that might be palatable, but something that > involves replacing a lot of the forms people chose with other forms > seems less likely to achieve consensus. Thanks for your suggestions. At this point option (1) is looking most attractive. Probably, I will just withdraw the CF entry soon unless there is some new interest. Just chipping away fixing a few places isn't going to achieve the consistency this thread was aiming for. > > The alternative of just not worrying about it too much also seems to > have some merit. As you say, you weren't actually confused, just > irritated by the inconsistency; and spending effort on things that are > more irritating than serious is not always the right thing to do. > Yes, as I am learning. ====== [1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/storage-toast.html Kind Regards, Peter Smith. Fujitsu Australia
As the original author of the TOAST I vote for TOAST being used as the name/acronym of the feature, but toast in all other cases like as verb. Best Regards, Jan On 3/16/25 22:49, Robert Haas wrote: > On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 7:38 PM Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> wrote: >> If I understand correctly, the summary is: >> - Tom: +1 for "TOAST table", but changing all the combined forms is >> maybe not worth the effort. >> - DavidJ: Wants to uppercase TOAST only when it refers to 'technique'; >> lowercase otherwise. >> - RobertT: The verbs should be lowercase (e.g. laser). Each-way bet re >> David's technique idea. >> - RobertH: Don't lowercase verbs, but instead try to rewrite these >> differently where possible. > > I'm not sure I agree with this summary of my position. I'm against > TOASTed, TOAST-able, and un-TOASTed, and in fact it seems to me that > nobody else who has commented on this proposal likes those either. It > seems to me that the idea of upper-casting TOAST where it stands alone > as a separate word may have some support, although not everyone who > has commented wants to do it in every situation and nobody seems to > think it is super-important. But as far as I can see, nobody other > than you is a fan of doing it when a prefix or suffix has been added. > I don't mean to suggest that your opinion is unimportant, just that, > in this case, it doesn't seem to have attracted any support from > others. > > So I would suggest that you either: > > (1) drop this patch, or perhaps > (2) cut it down to something that just changes some or all usages of > TOAST without prefix or suffix and leaves everything else alone, or > perhaps > (3) do (2) but also add some rewording to (3a) avoid needing to use > prefixed or suffixed forms or (3b) to avoid using TOAST altogether. > > I really don't think you're going to get consensus on capitalizing the > letters TOAST someplace in the middle of a word. I mean, there's > probably precedent both ways. You get tasered by the police, not > TASERed by the police; but I think you would write that you were > SMSing with a colleague rather than smsing with a colleague. But as > you say, "everybody wrote what they believe is correct," so there is > probably not going to be support for radically upending our existing > conventions, and deTOASTing is definitely a minority position. If you > really want to change something, getting rid of the few instances of > minority positions like that might be palatable, but something that > involves replacing a lot of the forms people chose with other forms > seems less likely to achieve consensus. > > The alternative of just not worrying about it too much also seems to > have some merit. As you say, you weren't actually confused, just > irritated by the inconsistency; and spending effort on things that are > more irritating than serious is not always the right thing to do. >
Jan Wieck <jan@wi3ck.info> writes:
> As the original author of the TOAST I vote for TOAST being used as the
> name/acronym of the feature, but toast in all other cases like as verb.
Well, if we're appealing to history ... I dug in the archives
and found that you seem to have invented the name here [1]:
Since we decided not to create a separate LONG datatype, and
not doing LONG attributes alone (compression at some point
too), I looked for some unique name for it - and found one.
The characters 'toast' did not show up on a case insensitive
grep over the entire CVS tree. Thus, I'll call it
tuple toaster
subsequently. I think there are enough similarities to a
toaster in this case. If you take a bread (tuple) and toast
some of the slices (attributes), anything can work as you
want and it will smell and taste delicious. In some cases,
slices might get burned (occationally hitting an indexed
value), taste bitter and it will stink.
BTW: The idea itself was stolen from toast/untoast, a GSM
voice data compression/decompression tool.
Note the lack of any upper case. Shortly later we reverse-engineered
an acronym for it [2], with the winner being Tom Lockhart's
The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique
So I'd say that the basis for upper-casing it at all is mighty
thin; it was not conceived as an acronym to begin with. We should
probably adjust our glossary entry for it to nod in the direction
of that GSM tool, if anyone can find a modern reference for that.
regards, tom lane
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/m120C3U-0003kHC%40orion.SAPserv.Hamburg.dsh.de
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/m120DHd-0003kLC%40orion.SAPserv.Hamburg.dsh.de
On 3/17/25 00:24, Tom Lane wrote: > Note the lack of any upper case. Shortly later we reverse-engineered > an acronym for it [2], with the winner being Tom Lockhart's > > The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique Which made it into an acronym. Acronyms are typically capitalized to distinguish them from ordinary words. Best Regards, Jan
> On 3/17/25 00:24, Tom Lane wrote: > > Note the lack of any upper case. Shortly later we reverse-engineered > > an acronym for it [2], with the winner being Tom Lockhart's > > > > The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique I (very easily) found a reference to the GSM tool: https://linux.die.net/man/1/toast At the bottom, you're directed to write to Jutta at UT Berlin in case of bugs. Searching for that you'll eventually arrive at http://quut.com/berlin/toast.html which points out that this is Jutta Degener, currently of Sunnyvale, CA: https://quut.com/credits.p3 On 2025-Mar-17, Jan Wieck wrote: > Which made it into an acronym. Acronyms are typically capitalized to > distinguish them from ordinary words. However, we do stop capitalizing acronyms once they get in common enough. The example of LASER (originall acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation") was already mentioned, but there's also RADAR ("radio detection and ranging"), which is particularly useful in this discussion because its wikipedia page says The term radar has since entered English and other languages as an anacronym, a common noun, losing all capitalization. -- Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/ "I apologize for the confusion in my previous responses. There appears to be an error." (ChatGPT)