Providing this information as plain text was doubtless worth the trouble
ten years ago, but it seems likely that hardly anyone reads it in this
format anymore. And the effort required to maintain these files (in the
form of extra-complex markup rules in the relevant parts of the SGML
documentation) is significant. So, let's stop doing that and rely solely
on the other documentation formats.
Per discussion, the plain-text INSTALL instructions might still be worth
their keep, so we continue to generate that file.
Rather than remove HISTORY and src/test/regress/README from distribution
tarballs entirely, replace them with simple stub files that tell the reader
where to find the relevant documentation. This is mainly to avoid possibly
breaking packaging recipes that expect these files to exist.
Back-patch to all supported branches, because simplifying the markup
requirements for release notes won't help much unless we do it in all
branches.
Create separate appendixes for contrib extensions and other server
plugins on the one hand, and utility programs on the other. Recast
the documentation of the latter as refentries, so that man pages are
generated.
This is a parsed DocBook DTD for the PSGML Emacs mode, but it hasn't
been updated since we switched to DocBook 4.2 about seven years ago.
Also, PSGML has deprecated this method of DTD parsing.
Documentation files in HTML and man formats are now prepared for
distribution using the distprep make target, like everything else. They
are placed in doc/src/sgml/html and manX and installed from there by
make install, if present. The business with the tarballs in the tarball
is gone.
This switches the man page building process to use the DocBook XSL stylesheet
toolchain. The previous targets for Docbook2X are removed. configure has been
updated to look for the new tools. The Documentation appendix contains the
new build instructions. There are also a few isolated tweaks in the
documentation to improve places that came out strangely in the man pages.
Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:
may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."
can - ability, "I can lift that log."
might - possibility, "It might rain today."
Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice. Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".
Also update two error messages mentioned in the documenation to match.
properly.
Remove SGML docs about openjade performance patch, and instead add
comment in style sheet where indenting code is commented out.
Backpatch to 8.2.X.
