Re: Adding comments for system table/column names

There was a thread in January of 2012 where we discussed the idea of
pulling system table/column name descriptions from the SGML docs and
creating SQL comments for them:

        http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2012-01/msg00837.php

Magnus didn't seem to like the idea:

        http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2012-01/msg00848.php

        Well, I'd expect some of those columns to get (at least over time)
        significantly more detailed information than they have now. Certainly
        more than you'd put in comments in the catalogs. And having some sort
        of combination there seems to overcomplicate things...

I think the idea of having the short descriptions in SQL and longer ones
in SGML is not maintainable.  One idea would be to clip the SQL
description to be no longer than a specified number of characters, with
proper word break detection.

Here is how psql displays column and table comments:

        test=> create table test(x int);
        CREATE TABLE
        test=> comment on column test.x IS 'wow';
        COMMENT
        test=> \d+ test
                                 Table "public.test"
         Column |  Type   | Modifiers | Storage | Stats target | Description
        --------+---------+-----------+---------+--------------+-------------
         x      | integer |           | plain   |              | wow
        Has OIDs: no

        test=> comment on table test is 'yikes';
        COMMENT
        test=> \d+
                            List of relations
         Schema | Name | Type  |  Owner   |  Size   | Description
        --------+------+-------+----------+---------+-------------
         public | test | table | postgres | 0 bytes | yikes
        (1 row)

Should I continue working on this patch?