Re: Proposal: new border setting in psql

On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:57:50 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Also, having now looked at the proposed patch, it seems clear that it
> isn't addressing the issue of quoting/escaping at all; so I wonder how
> this can be considered to be a safely machine-readable format.

It's not a machine readable format.  It is a simple display with more
border lines.  Just like "border 2" is like "border 1" with more border
lines.  I'm just following the progression.

> In particular, the output seems to me to not even approximate the rules
> laid down at
> http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html

And there is no reason that it should.

> So, quite aside from the question of whether we care to support ReST,
> my opinion is that this patch fails to do so, and a significantly more
> invasive patch would be needed to do it.

I suppose it is my fault for mentioning ReST.  That was the reason I
looked into this but that is not what the final proposal is.  I too
would argue against making a munged output just to match one formatting
scheme.  If I do a query and I need to modify it manually when I use it
in *any* third party program that's my personal issue.  If "border 3"
happens to get me closer to my format that's great but it has to stand
on its own merit.  I think that this proopsal does.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
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