Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-30 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Bruce Momjian writes:

 Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release
 notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output
 at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch.

 Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary
 jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the
 release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for
 others.

That is not the scalable community approach that has been successful in
other areas of development.  You might as well say, Just tell me all the
features you need and I'll implement them.  Now *that* would make it easy
for other people.

Once upon a time we thought that documentation wasn't important or that is
was hindering people to get involved.  I think that has largely been
disproven and we have been very successful with the document the code
when you write it approach.  The same approach can be used for the
release notes.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-30 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Bruce Momjian writes:

 I have added my first release note detail item.  I used footnote to
 add a description to the first release note item.

Please don't use footnotes.  They make things really hard to read.  There
are plenty of other mechanisms to organize information.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-30 Thread Bruce Momjian
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
 Bruce Momjian writes:
 
  I have added my first release note detail item.  I used footnote to
  add a description to the first release note item.
 
 Please don't use footnotes.  They make things really hard to read.  There
 are plenty of other mechanisms to organize information.

OK, please suggest what I should use.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-29 Thread Bruce Momjian

I have added my first release note detail item.  I used footnote to
add a description to the first release note item.  You can see it
rendered here:

http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release.html#RELEASE-DEVEL

I plan to go through the release notes and add more.  If we decide on a
different format, I can change this.

---

Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
  Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be
written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
period of time.  Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add
Informix mode.

I suggest we just do it like the documentation:  If you don't document it,
it doesn't exist.  If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
doesn't exist either.
   
   I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been
   working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese),
   otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since
   there is little info in the official release note. This is painful
   since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to
   look for what each item of the official release note actually
   means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people
   involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful
   information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical
   messages are something like see recent discussions in the mail
   archive for more details. This is not very helpful at least for
   me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the
   commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace
   what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the
   fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to
   coulture gap... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in
   mailing lists is quite common).
  
  OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it.  I can
  supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
  notes to contain more information.  Seems some in the community would
  like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
  official docs.  One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
  release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
  notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
  notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
  or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.
  
  How does that sound?  I can start on this for 7.4 next week.  It
  basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
  additional details.
 
 Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I
 am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source
 tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe
 http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate.
 What do you think?
 --
 Tatsuo Ishii
 

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-26 Thread Andrew Dunstan


Bruce Momjian wrote:

Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
 

OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it.  I can
supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
notes to contain more information.  Seems some in the community would
like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
official docs.  One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.
How does that sound?  I can start on this for 7.4 next week.  It
basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
additional details.
 

Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I
am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source
tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe
http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate.
What do you think?
   

Yes, I had thought about that --- I put something about migrating to 7.3
on a web page and put the URL in the release notes, and the URL kept
becoming invalid as they changed web configurations.  I am afraid we
have to keep this in CVS so we don't lose it over time.
It could be huge.  Current release notes for 7.4 is around 500 lines.  I
think I could do this in another 500 lines.
This is starting to sound awfully like a conventional bug tracking 
system but without the support infrastructure. Why not go the whole 
distance? Then your release notes could give the numbers and headings of 
bugs fixed  (including features added) and those who want more details 
could look at the bug reports. The process could be a whole lot less 
painful than it appears to be right now, I suspect.

cheers

andrew



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-26 Thread Bruce Momjian
Andrew Dunstan wrote:
 Yes, I had thought about that --- I put something about migrating to 7.3
 on a web page and put the URL in the release notes, and the URL kept
 becoming invalid as they changed web configurations.  I am afraid we
 have to keep this in CVS so we don't lose it over time.
 
 It could be huge.  Current release notes for 7.4 is around 500 lines.  I
 think I could do this in another 500 lines.
 
 
 This is starting to sound awfully like a conventional bug tracking 
 system but without the support infrastructure. Why not go the whole 
 distance? Then your release notes could give the numbers and headings of 
 bugs fixed  (including features added) and those who want more details 
 could look at the bug reports. The process could be a whole lot less 
 painful than it appears to be right now, I suspect.

Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release
notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output
at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch.

Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary
jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the
release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for
others.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-26 Thread Andrew Dunstan


Bruce Momjian wrote:

Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release
notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output
at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch.
Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary
jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the
release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for
others.
 

You do a fine job and I know it is appreciated.  I'd hate to think what 
would happen if you got run over by a bus.

It's a bit of a matter of taste - I think bug tracking systems give 
projects better support than mailing lists, but maybe that's just me.

cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-26 Thread Bruce Momjian
Andrew Dunstan wrote:
 
 
 Bruce Momjian wrote:
 
 Bug tracking systems have the same limitation as incremental release
 notes --- youi have to do a lot of piecemeal work to get complete output
 at the end, rather than doing it more efficiently in one batch.
 
 Most people working on PostgreSQL are volunteers, and one of my primary
 jobs is to make it easy for them --- if it takes me a week to get the
 release notes together --- so be it --- I am making it easier for
 others.
   
 
 
 You do a fine job and I know it is appreciated.  I'd hate to think what 
 would happen if you got run over by a bus.
 
 It's a bit of a matter of taste - I think bug tracking systems give 
 projects better support than mailing lists, but maybe that's just me.

I think our goal is to get every known problem on the TODO list so
people can scan it quickly.  It is also easier to have it all
centralized and distilled.  However, it is hard to get more detail on
the bug, so we have TODO.detail.

Bug tracking systems are an extra level of abstraction for projects in
that it categorizes discussion.  However, that abstraction level also
slows things down --- hard to say if it is a win or not.

Ideally, I would like to do all the unpleasant work and making improving
PostgreSQL easy for others.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-25 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
  I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
  been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be
  written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
  This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
  the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
  We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
  sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
  period of time.  Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
  there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add
  Informix mode.
  
  I suggest we just do it like the documentation:  If you don't document it,
  it doesn't exist.  If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
  doesn't exist either.
 
 I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been
 working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese),
 otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since
 there is little info in the official release note. This is painful
 since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to
 look for what each item of the official release note actually
 means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people
 involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful
 information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical
 messages are something like see recent discussions in the mail
 archive for more details. This is not very helpful at least for
 me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the
 commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace
 what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the
 fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to
 coulture gap... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in
 mailing lists is quite common).

OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it.  I can
supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
notes to contain more information.  Seems some in the community would
like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
official docs.  One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.

How does that sound?  I can start on this for 7.4 next week.  It
basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
additional details.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-25 Thread Tatsuo Ishii
 Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
   I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
   been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be
   written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
   This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
   the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
   We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
   sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
   period of time.  Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
   there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add
   Informix mode.
   
   I suggest we just do it like the documentation:  If you don't document it,
   it doesn't exist.  If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
   doesn't exist either.
  
  I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been
  working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese),
  otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since
  there is little info in the official release note. This is painful
  since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to
  look for what each item of the official release note actually
  means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people
  involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful
  information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical
  messages are something like see recent discussions in the mail
  archive for more details. This is not very helpful at least for
  me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the
  commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace
  what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the
  fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to
  coulture gap... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in
  mailing lists is quite common).
 
 OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it.  I can
 supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
 notes to contain more information.  Seems some in the community would
 like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
 official docs.  One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
 release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
 notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
 notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
 or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.
 
 How does that sound?  I can start on this for 7.4 next week.  It
 basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
 additional details.

Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I
am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source
tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe
http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate.
What do you think?
--
Tatsuo Ishii

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-25 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
  OK, if Tatsuo and SRA are having problems, I have to address it.  I can
  supply a more detailed list to Tatsuo/SRA, or I can beef up the release
  notes to contain more information.  Seems some in the community would
  like to have this detail so I might as well do it and have it in the
  official docs.  One idea would be to add a section at the bottom of the
  release notes that goes into detail on changes listed in the release
  notes above --- that way, people can still skim the 300-line release
  notes, and if they want detailed information about the optimizer changes
  or subtle pg_dump fixes, that will be at the bottom.
  
  How does that sound?  I can start on this for 7.4 next week.  It
  basically means going through the CVS logs again and pulling out
  additional details.
 
 Sounds good. However this kind of information could become huge and I
 am afraid it does not suite well in the official docs in the source
 tree. I think putiing it in somewhere in a web site (maybe
 http://developer.postgresql.org/?) might be more appropreate.
 What do you think?

Yes, I had thought about that --- I put something about migrating to 7.3
on a web page and put the URL in the release notes, and the URL kept
becoming invalid as they changed web configurations.  I am afraid we
have to keep this in CVS so we don't lose it over time.

It could be huge.  Current release notes for 7.4 is around 500 lines.  I
think I could do this in another 500 lines.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Neil Conway writes:

 So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a
 bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively.
 We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding xrefs to
 the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really*
 maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather
 than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch
 that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when
 the patch is applied.

I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be
written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
period of time.  Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add
Informix mode.

I suggest we just do it like the documentation:  If you don't document it,
it doesn't exist.  If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
doesn't exist either.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Peter Eisentraut writes:

 Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and there is no
 mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add Informix
 mode.

Sorry, inconsistent spelling tripped me up on this one.  But the
theoretical point stands.

-- 
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Bruce Momjian
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
 Neil Conway writes:
 
  So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a
  bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively.
  We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding xrefs to
  the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really*
  maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather
  than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch
  that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when
  the patch is applied.
 
 I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
 been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be

If they _must_ be done the way you suggest, why have we been able to
generate reliable release notes all these years?

Basically, I think release notes are more efficiently written in batch
mode, meaning all at once --- sure, we could do it incrementally, but it
is more work to fiddle with it in pieces.

I want people to focus on reliable commit messages and I can handle the
release notes part.  The one advantage of incremental is that folks can
see what we have added so far, but it doesn't seem worth the extra work.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Bruce Momjian
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 03:11:25PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
  Peter Eisentraut writes:
  
   Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and there is no
   mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add Informix
   mode.
 
 I still wonder what Informix compatibility mode means.  Is it that you
 can take an embedded-C program from Informix and compile it with ECPG?

Yes, it is for compiling/running informix-style ecpg programs with
PostgreSQL.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Bruce Momjian writes:

 If they _must_ be done the way you suggest, why have we been able to
 generate reliable release notes all these years?

With all respect for your work and your enthusiasm for this approach, but
personally, I have absolutely no confidence that the release notes are
complete, accurate, or reliable.  That is my deeply founded motivation for
trying to institute changes.  But I might be wrong and my fears might have
no merit.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Bruce Momjian
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
 Bruce Momjian writes:
 
  If they _must_ be done the way you suggest, why have we been able to
  generate reliable release notes all these years?
 
 With all respect for your work and your enthusiasm for this approach, but
 personally, I have absolutely no confidence that the release notes are
 complete, accurate, or reliable.  That is my deeply founded motivation for
 trying to institute changes.  But I might be wrong and my fears might have
 no merit.

Sure, I fear missing things too.  One of my goals is to make sure I
understand all the CVS commit messages that appear, so I know later I
can make a release note about it.  Right now, we have a simple process
that you can move through step by step and make sure you get everything.
With a piecemeal approach, I think we are much more likely to miss
something, or have things get confused by merging a CVS log version and
a piecemeal version.

Looking at the past, I don't remember us missing anything --- I do
remember missing a few items that should have been listed in the
compatibilities section, but that is more of a problem of us not
reviewing the release notes thoroughly.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-24 Thread Tatsuo Ishii
 I've been pushing this agenda for a few releases now, but some people have
 been, er, boycotting it.  I think, too, that release notes *must* be
 written incrementally at the same time that the feature change is made.
 This is the only way we can get accurate and complete release notes, and
 the descriptions could even include some context, some motivations, etc.
 We have release cycles of 10 months, and there is no way we can make
 sensible release notes by gathering individual commit messages over that
 period of time.  Heck, ECPG has a full Informix compatibility mode and
 there is no mention of that anywhere, because there was no commit Add
 Informix mode.
 
 I suggest we just do it like the documentation:  If you don't document it,
 it doesn't exist.  If you don't write a line for the release notes, it
 doesn't exist either.

I tend to agree it. For every release I and my colleague have been
working on creating detailed release notes (of course in Japanese),
otherwise we cannot tell people what are changed, added or fixed since
there is little info in the official release note. This is painful
since we have to dig into the mail archives and cvs commit messages to
look for what each item of the official release note actually
means. These work take at least 2 to 3 weeks with several people
involved. The hardest part is what are fixed. The only useful
information seems to be the cvs commit messages, however typical
messages are something like see recent discussions in the mail
archive for more details. This is not very helpful at least for
me. Once I proposed that we add a sequence number to each mail and the
commit messages point to the number. This way we could easily trace
what are the bug report and what are the actual intention for the
fix. For some reason noboy was interested in. Maybe this is due to
coulture gap... (In Japan giving a sequence number to each mail in
mailing lists is quite common).
--
Tatsuo Ishii

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-23 Thread Michael Brusser
 -Original Message-
 From: Bruce Momjian 
...
 The big question is whether the current release notes hit he right
 balanced.  Do they for you?

The last time I read the notes was when we upgraded to 7.3.4.
I'll pick up couple entries from Release Notes and the HISTORY file
(which we always read) for examples.

PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality. 
 = this is entirely sufficient. Detailed info can be found in the docs.

Optimizer improvements
 = this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code
tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major
breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take
a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? 

Fix to_ascii() buffer overruns
 = I don't think I need any more details here

Work around buggy strxfrm() present in some Solaris releases
 = if we did not suffer from this (big thanks for fixing!) I would've
never guessed how it may manifest itself and affect the database,
even though this alone could be a strong reason for upgrade.

If you think this would take too much space and bloat the document,
then maybe the best solution is to have a reference number:
 Bug# 123 : Work around ...
Then I could go to some http://postgres../bugtrack enter this number
and learn more.

Mike.



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-23 Thread Bruce Momjian
Michael Brusser wrote:
  -Original Message-
  From: Bruce Momjian 
 ...
  The big question is whether the current release notes hit he right
  balanced.  Do they for you?
 
 The last time I read the notes was when we upgraded to 7.3.4.
 I'll pick up couple entries from Release Notes and the HISTORY file
 (which we always read) for examples.
 
 PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality. 
  = this is entirely sufficient. Detailed info can be found in the docs.

Good.

 Optimizer improvements
  = this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code
 tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major
 breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take
 a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? 

Yes, this is always very hard to explain. The optimizer itself is
complex, and uses complex terms like merge join and key pruning.  It is
hard to explain what queries will be affected, though the basic issue is
that the optimizer will choose a better plan more frequently.

 Fix to_ascii() buffer overruns
  = I don't think I need any more details here
 
 Work around buggy strxfrm() present in some Solaris releases
  = if we did not suffer from this (big thanks for fixing!) I would've
 never guessed how it may manifest itself and affect the database,
 even though this alone could be a strong reason for upgrade.

We don't actually explain enough in the release notes for people to
determine if they should do _minor_ upgrades --- bottom line is that
minor upgrades only require a stop/install/restart postmaster, so we
assume everyone will do that, and in this case, if you are running
Solaris, that is enough of a reason alone --- whether that particular
bug affects you or not.

 If you think this would take too much space and bloat the document,
 then maybe the best solution is to have a reference number:
  Bug# 123 : Work around ...
 Then I could go to some http://postgres../bugtrack enter this number
 and learn more.

Yes, that would be nice.

So, it sounds like we are already pretty close to ideal for you.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-23 Thread Greg Stark
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Michael Brusser wrote:

  Optimizer improvements
   = this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code
  tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major
  breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take
  a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? 
 
 Yes, this is always very hard to explain. The optimizer itself is
 complex, and uses complex terms like merge join and key pruning.  It is
 hard to explain what queries will be affected, though the basic issue is
 that the optimizer will choose a better plan more frequently.

One thing that might be worth mentioning is that WHERE foo IN (subquery)
type queries are much improved. That's a one of the more common complaints
about 7.3 and previous and it's one that fairly easy to recognize.

-- 
greg


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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-23 Thread Bruce Momjian
Greg Stark wrote:
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  Michael Brusser wrote:
 
   Optimizer improvements
= this tells me nothing. I suppose this could be a minor internal code
   tweak, which does not affect me. On the other hand this could be a major
   breakthrough, so now I can run some stupid query which would take
   a week to complete in the previous release. How do I know? 
  
  Yes, this is always very hard to explain. The optimizer itself is
  complex, and uses complex terms like merge join and key pruning.  It is
  hard to explain what queries will be affected, though the basic issue is
  that the optimizer will choose a better plan more frequently.
 
 One thing that might be worth mentioning is that WHERE foo IN (subquery)
 type queries are much improved. That's a one of the more common complaints
 about 7.3 and previous and it's one that fairly easy to recognize.

That is right at the top of the release notes:

   Performance
  IN/NOT IN subqueries are now much more efficient

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Neil Conway
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 01:08, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 Do you think I include every user-visible change in the release notes?
 It would be 2-3x longer, and probably not more useful.

 Part of the reason the release notes are read is
 because they are _readable_

On the contrary, I think we could do a lot to make the release notes
more readable, while at the same time providing more information to
users.

We're really serving two different audiences with the release notes.
Some people are just interested in the highlights of the release, so
that they are up to date on the latest new PostgreSQL functionality. For
these people, I think the existing highlights of the release section
at the top of the release notes is sufficient, although it could
probably be made a less terse.

The second audience is the people who are really interested in exactly
what has changed between the new release of PostgreSQL and the previous
release series. It is important that we make it easy for an admin
planning a PostgreSQL upgrade at a fairly large site to be able to see
what changes in PostgreSQL have been made, and what changes will be
necessary in their own applications. This audience is served fairly well
by the present release notes, but I think we could do better. The
backward-incompatibility section could definitely be improved, and the
whole process of summarizing the CVS logs after the fact is sure to lose
information. Furthermore, many of the release note entries are so brief
that it's difficult, even for someone familiar with PostgreSQL, to tell
exactly what they mean. Sometimes the entry doesn't even bother to
specify exactly what has been changed. Using complete sentences, where
warranted, and describing complex or important changes with a full
paragraph of text would be a good idea, IMHO. I've appended a few
examples of less-than-optimal entries to this mail.

So I think we could make the release notes more useful if we provided a
bit more detail in each entry, and documented changes more extensively.
We could also make better use of SGML, for example by adding xrefs to
the release notes where applicable. I think we also need to *really*
maintain the release notes incrementally during 7.5 development, rather
than having Bruce summarize the CVS logs at the end. IMHO, every patch
that makes a significant change should update the release notes, when
the patch is applied.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on how to improve the release notes. I've
been meaning to get this off my chest for a while, so thanks for the
chance :-)

Comments are welcome.

-Neil

Here are a few examples of less-than-optimal entries I noticed while
browsing the release notes recently:

This HISTORY entry from 7.4 doesn't really tell anyone anything:

* Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects

Or take this entry -- I can basically decipher what it means, but it
takes a fair degree of difficulty:

 * Disallow literal carriage return as a data value,
   backslash-carriage-return and \r are still allowed (Bruce)

Or this entry, which once again conveys little useful information, to me
at least:

 * Improve \d display (Christopher)



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Bruce Momjian
Neil Conway wrote:
 On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 01:08, Bruce Momjian wrote:
  Do you think I include every user-visible change in the release notes?
  It would be 2-3x longer, and probably not more useful.
 
  Part of the reason the release notes are read is
  because they are _readable_
 
 On the contrary, I think we could do a lot to make the release notes
 more readable, while at the same time providing more information to
 users.
 
 
 Here are a few examples of less-than-optimal entries I noticed while
 browsing the release notes recently:
 
 This HISTORY entry from 7.4 doesn't really tell anyone anything:
 
 * Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects

I agree it would be nice to use more xrefs in the release notes.

What happens when you go into more detail is that it comes even more
confusing --- in most cases we fixed some obscure flag combination or
something, and explaining that is even harder than just saying we fixed
some rare pg_dump failure cases.  The people who reported the problem
have already gotten their fix, and in most cases, they are the only ones
to have ever tried that combination --- documenting that doesn't really
add much, at least for me and I would assume 99% of our users.  We could
go for 99.9% of our users, but that makes things harder to filter for
the other 99%.

Please do a test --- do a cvs log of the bin/pg_dump directory and see
if I missed anything significant in the release notes.

If you start listing obscure changes, the significant ones don't really
stand out anymore.  You could add a 'obscure changes' section, but I
think once you create the list and read it, it will look pretty obscure.

 Or take this entry -- I can basically decipher what it means, but it
 takes a fair degree of difficulty:
 
  * Disallow literal carriage return as a data value,
backslash-carriage-return and \r are still allowed (Bruce)

OK, please improve the wording.

 Or this entry, which once again conveys little useful information, to me
 at least:
 
  * Improve \d display (Christopher)

There were a huge number of \d display improvements --- do \d in 7.4 and
you will see them --- I don't see much value in saying, Rules now
display as ..., or defaults now have more parens.

I have always encouraged people to improve the existing notes.  I don't
pretend to use the perfect wording --- please send in improvements.

As far as incrementally updating the release notes --- lots of our work
is incremental, meaning we fix X, then add Y, and Z, and the resulting
change is one release note entry (psql \d display improvements, for
example).  Documenting them separately just leads to a mess of entries
that we have to consolidate at the end anyway.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 As far as incrementally updating the release notes --- lots of our work
 is incremental, meaning we fix X, then add Y, and Z, and the resulting
 change is one release note entry (psql \d display improvements, for
 example).  Documenting them separately just leads to a mess of entries
 that we have to consolidate at the end anyway.

We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes
to release.sgml as they are made.  That's relatively new though, and I
dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not.
Bruce, did you use those notes at all this time?

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane wrote:
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  As far as incrementally updating the release notes --- lots of our work
  is incremental, meaning we fix X, then add Y, and Z, and the resulting
  change is one release note entry (psql \d display improvements, for
  example).  Documenting them separately just leads to a mess of entries
  that we have to consolidate at the end anyway.
 
 We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes
 to release.sgml as they are made.  That's relatively new though, and I
 dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not.
 Bruce, did you use those notes at all this time?

I checked them to make sure they were already included in my CVS notes,
and I might have used some of its wording if it was better than mine.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Michael Brusser
We integrate PostgreSQL with our product, which we ship to the end user.
We do read the release notes, they are important to us.
They don't have to be excruciatingly long, they can't be
ridiculously short and cryptic.
You have to find the golden spot in the middle. Just treat us
the way you want to be treated + some extra allowance for ignorance.

Mike.


  Part of the reason the release notes are read is
  because they are _readable_



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Bruce Momjian
Michael Brusser wrote:
 We integrate PostgreSQL with our product, which we ship to the end user.
 We do read the release notes, they are important to us.
 They don't have to be excruciatingly long, they can't be
 ridiculously short and cryptic.
 You have to find the golden spot in the middle. Just treat us
 the way you want to be treated + some extra allowance for ignorance.

The big question is whether the current release notes hit he right
balanced.  Do they for you?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.|  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Neil Conway
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 13:26, Tom Lane wrote:
 We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes
 to release.sgml as they are made.  That's relatively new though, and I
 dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not.

Right, we also did a pretty bad job of incrementally updating
release.sgml during the development cycle: only a small portion of all
the changes that we made actually got added to it. I think it would be a
good idea to try to be better at this during the 7.5 cycle. When 7.5
development begins, we should divide release.sgml into the relevant
sections (e.g. libpq, contrib, performance, highlights of the
release, etc.), and then keep it updated whenever a relevant change is
made.

IMHO that would be bother easier to maintain (see we need to write CVS
changelog entries anyway, and Bruce wouldn't need to spend as long
summarizing the changes at the end of the dev cycle), as well as
producing a better quality release notes -- but since Bruce is the one
actually doing the work, I'm content to leave this in his hands.

-Neil



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-22 Thread Bruce Momjian
Neil Conway wrote:
 On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 13:26, Tom Lane wrote:
  We do already have a practice of adding notes about significant changes
  to release.sgml as they are made.  That's relatively new though, and I
  dunno if it's helped Bruce prepare the finished release notes or not.
 
 Right, we also did a pretty bad job of incrementally updating
 release.sgml during the development cycle: only a small portion of all
 the changes that we made actually got added to it. I think it would be a
 good idea to try to be better at this during the 7.5 cycle. When 7.5
 development begins, we should divide release.sgml into the relevant
 sections (e.g. libpq, contrib, performance, highlights of the
 release, etc.), and then keep it updated whenever a relevant change is
 made.
 
 IMHO that would be bother easier to maintain (see we need to write CVS
 changelog entries anyway, and Bruce wouldn't need to spend as long
 summarizing the changes at the end of the dev cycle), as well as
 producing a better quality release notes -- but since Bruce is the one
 actually doing the work, I'm content to leave this in his hands.

I find it easier to generate a list from raw CVS than to merge +500
entries into a consistent whole, and I never expect the maintained list
to be 100% accurate, so I have to do the CVS thing anyway.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Tom Lane
Christopher Kings-Lynne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4,  will DEFAULT 
 'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? 

No, because those values don't change over time.  The issue here is when
exactly does the default value get evaluated...

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Christopher Kings-Lynne

Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4,  will DEFAULT 
'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? 


No, because those values don't change over time.  The issue here is when
exactly does the default value get evaluated...
Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should 
also be mentioned in the release notes.

Chris



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Tom Lane
Christopher Kings-Lynne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4,  will DEFAULT 
 'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? 
 
 No, because those values don't change over time.  The issue here is when
 exactly does the default value get evaluated...

 Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should 
 also be mentioned in the release notes.

Good point ... not that I think anyone is actually using such a default
in the field, but the behavior did change ...

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane wrote:
 Christopher Kings-Lynne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Now that DEFAULT 'now' will not work in PostgreSQL 7.4,  will DEFAULT 
  'infinity' and DEFAULT '-infinity' and the like stop working as well? 
  
  No, because those values don't change over time.  The issue here is when
  exactly does the default value get evaluated...
 
  Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should 
  also be mentioned in the release notes.
 
 Good point ... not that I think anyone is actually using such a default
 in the field, but the behavior did change ...

It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
change, only significant ones.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Christopher Kings-Lynne

It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
change, only significant ones.
Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy!  How does it hurt us 
to mention it and you just know that someone, somewhere, is doing it...

Chris



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Neil Conway
On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 00:41, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
  It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
  inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
  change, only significant ones.
 
 Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy!

I agree -- documenting possible areas of incompatibility is important,
and I would prefer that we err on the side of mentioning too much,
rather than too little.

-Neil



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Tom Lane wrote:
 Christopher Kings-Lynne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Ah, of course - but what about 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' - these should 
 also be mentioned in the release notes.
 
 Good point ... not that I think anyone is actually using such a default
 in the field, but the behavior did change ...

 It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
 inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
 change, only significant ones.

A moment's further thought reveals 'today' as another potentially broken
default value, which seems more likely to be used in practice than 
'yesterday' or 'tomorrow'.  I'm too beat to go digging for other legal
inputs, but there may be some...

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Christopher Kings-Lynne

A moment's further thought reveals 'today' as another potentially broken
default value, which seems more likely to be used in practice than 
'yesterday' or 'tomorrow'.  I'm too beat to go digging for other legal
inputs, but there may be some...
Ah, I didn't mention that one because I thought it was obvious and had 
already been mentioned :P

Chris



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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Bruce Momjian
Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
 
  It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
  inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
  change, only significant ones.
 
 Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy!  How does it hurt us 
 to mention it and you just know that someone, somewhere, is doing it...

The release notes are already 550 lines --- adding the mention of
something almost no one uses doesn't make sense --- if we did that, the
list might be 1000 lines and more unreadable.  Same logic goes for the
list of changes --- I only mention user-visible changes, in most cases.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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Re: [HACKERS] 7.4 compatibility question

2003-10-21 Thread Bruce Momjian
Neil Conway wrote:
 On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 00:41, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
   It would be pretty strange to use those as a default --- I am not
   inclined to mention it in the release notes --- we don't mention every
   change, only significant ones.
  
  Personally, I think that's a fairly silly policy!
 
 I agree -- documenting possible areas of incompatibility is important,
 and I would prefer that we err on the side of mentioning too much,
 rather than too little.

Docs updated to include 'today':

 listitempara literal'now'/literal will no longer work as a
column default; functionnow()/ or
functionCURRENT_TIMESTAMP/ should be used instead/para/listitem
 listitempara literal'today'/literal will no longer work as
a column default; functionCURRENT_DATE/
should be used instead/para/listitem

As far as yesterday/tomorrow, I think anyone using that will realize
that if 'today' doesn't work, those will not either.  Sure, I like to be
complete too, but at a certain point it becomes overload and people
can't process it.  Part of the reason the release notes are read is
because they are _readable_, or as readable was we can make +300
changes.

Do you think I include every user-visible change in the release notes? 
It would be 2-3x longer, and probably not more useful.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian|  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive, |  13 Roberts Road
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