Robert Treat wrote:
Just so you know, I approached OReally about writing a PostgreSQL Cookbook, and they turned it down. They did offer me some other titles, but those don't seem to have gone anywhere.
As someone else pointed out in this thread, very much of what you need to know has been previously discussed at one point; the hard part is finding it.
What we need is for some of the people with the big brains ;) to come up with some new kind of "hyperbook". That would be the documentation in some form similar to what it is today, but somehow connected to the discussions that happen in the mailing lists. That way, when something really insightful or helpful gets said in the mailing lists, it can get connected to a particular place in the documentation. Then over time, the doc maintainers can take the best of those and incorporate them directly into the docs at the appropriate place.
This would not only benefit those looking for information, but also those hearty and knowledgeable souls (like Tom) who patiently provide it repeatedly as the same questions pop up every couple weeks/months. Plus, the documentation would grow and become much more useful over time. Then, instead of repeating answers to repeating questions, we can just point to the appropriate place in the docs. The "unattached" discussions could identify sections lacking in the docs; i.e., if enough unattached discussions accumulate for a particular topic, then that probably indicates the need for a new section in the docs on that topic.
To be honest, I think a hyperbook would be easier to implement with forums than with mailing lists. The former are permanently resident in a known place, while the latter are out there in the ether (or in some unorganized archive that is notoriously hard to link to.)
-- Guy Rouillier ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
