Re: Is my MySQL Gaining ?

Bruno Wolff III wrote:

>Once you know where to look for stuff it isn't that hard to find things.
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Yes, but what happens where you don't know where to look for stuff?

>This is one of the advantages of reading through the whole manual once
>to get an idea of whats there.
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Sure, but who has time to read through a whole manual first? No system I 
ever learned had me do that.

>When I need to look things up for Postgres I use a local copy of the web
>based documentation.
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A good idea. But If you work for different locations (home, client's 
office, office), then that becomes redundant. Besides I would be 
responsible for syncing the manual from PG to each location. Besides, a 
local copy would not usually have a search engine built in.

>I don't like this. It will make scrolling through a group of related
>functions harder. Name anchors can be used to allow links directly to
>functions.
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Nope. I disagree with this one. It makes finding stuff easier if you 
type "nextval()" into a search engine, and it takes you directly to the 
nextval page.

>Do you see these two points as applying to only the copy of the
>documentation on the Postgres web site, or do you see this being distributed
>either with the database (as the current documentation is) or as
>a separate item (like some of the clients are)?
>
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In this case, documentation on the website should always be primary. 
Almost anyone working on modern software is always connected to the 
internet. A static copy of the interactive documentation can always be 
distributed with the software. But do many people even refer to the 
included documentation? To be honest, I dont. The documentation in psql 
(eg: \h COPY) is as far as i'll go, the next step in the main site, or 
google. Why rely on documentation on your hard disk that will get out of 
date soon anyway?

- Ericson Smith