Re: Patch to change psql default banner v6

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > I know we decided not to do that, but I am trying to figure out what the
> > goal if 'help' is?  To display the most frequently-used help commands?
> > Aren't they at the top of \?.
>
> The purpose of 'help' is to provide useful help.  If it only says "see \?"
> then it's just redirecting you somewhere else, which isn't useful.
>
> I don't think the various help commands need to be completely
> orthogonal.  If you agree with that, then making 'help' repeat part of
> what \? says is acceptable.  (Of course, the idea is not just to repeat,
> but also to provide useful advice to the unwary.)

OK.

> Remember, the people who is going to type 'help' is not the 10-year-Pg-
> experience types.  It's the newbies.

The larger issue is whether we want to advertise only "help" in the
startup banner.  The patch has just:

    Type: help for help.

Now, aside from being confusing (we need quotes around "help"), I
thought we should only mention \?.

My question is whether we agreed that suggesting "help" as the best way
to get help was what we agreed upon?  If we did, I forgot.  I thought
the 'help' ideas was just for people who forgot the help commands.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +