Re: Poll: are people okay with function/operator table redesign?

On 4/13/20 1:13 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> As discussed in the thread at [1], I've been working on redesigning
> the tables we use to present SQL functions and operators.  The
> first installment of that is now up; see tables 9.30 and 9.31 at
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/functions-datetime.html
>
> and table 9.33 at
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/functions-enum.html
>
> Before I spend more time on this, I want to make sure that people
> are happy with this line of attack.  Comparing these tables to
> the way they look in v12, they clearly take more vertical space;
> but at least to my eye they're less cluttered and more readable.
> They definitely scale a lot better for cases where a long function
> description is needed, or where we'd like to have more than one
> example.  Does anyone prefer the old way, or have a better idea?
>
> I know that the table headings are a bit weirdly laid out; hopefully
> that can be resolved [2].
>
>             regards, tom lane
>
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/9326.1581457869%40sss.pgh.pa.us
> [2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/6169.1586794603%40sss.pgh.pa.us
>

Gotta say I'm not a huge fan. I appreciate the effort, and I get the
problem, but I'm not sure we have a net improvement here.


One thing that did occur to me is that the function/operator name is
essentially redundant, as it's in the signature anyway. Not sure if that
helps us any though.


Maybe we're just trying to shoehorn too much information into a single
table.


cheers


andrew


-- 
Andrew Dunstan                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com
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