Re: Viability of text HISTORY/INSTALL/regression README files (was Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Document a few more regression test hazards.)

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 1:38 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> writes:
>>> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> I wonder if these standalone things are really worthwhile.
>
>> I wonder how difficult it would be to make sufficient link data available when
>> building the standalone files.  There would be no linking per se; we would
>> just need the referent's text fragment emitted where the <xref> tag appears.
>
> IIRC, that's basically what the "workaround" is, except it's not very
> automated.  Even if it were automated, though, there's still a problem:
> such links aren't really *useful* in flat text format.  I think that
> forcing the author to actually think about what to put there in the
> flat text version is a good thing, if we're going to retain the flat
> text version at all.

Right.  I mean, a lot of the links say things like "Section 26.2"
which obviously makes no sense in a standalone text file.

I agree with your comments upthread: INSTALL *might* still be useful
to somebody, but I would be pretty surprised if anyone uses HISTORY or
regress_README for anything any more.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company