Re: reprise: pretty print viewdefs

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
>> The simple solution I originally proposed to put a line feed and some space
>> before every target field in pretty print mode. This is a two line patch.
>> The downsides are a) maybe not everyone will like the change and b) it will
>> produce superfluous newlines, e.g. before CASE expressions.

> With regard to (a), specifically, you won't like this change if your
> column names are things like "bob" and "sam", because you'll burn
> through an inordinate amount of vertical space.

Yeah.  I'm not exactly thrilled with (b), either, if it's a consequence
of a change whose only excuse for living is to make the output look
nicer.  Random extra newlines don't look nicer to me.

> It has always seemed to me that a sensible strategy here would be to
> try to produce output that looks good in 80 columns,

Maybe, though I fear it might complicate the ruleutils code a bit.
You'd probably have to build the output for a column first and then
see how long it is before deciding whether to insert a newline.

In short, I don't mind trying to make this work better, but I think it
will take more work than a two-line patch.
        regards, tom lane