Improving psql and database documentation

In PostgreSQL, two major improvements have been made:

• Adding figures to the documentation
• Adding links to psql

The PostgreSQL documentation has traditionally been very good. However, in the past, the documentation did not contain any figures or graphical explanations; it was purely text, which made it hard for some people to quickly understand some aspects of the database. PostgreSQL has finally put an end to this and images have been introduced. This might sound like a minor thing, but it required some changes to the way documentation is handled in general. More figures will be added in the future.

The second change that is immediately visible to psql users is that \h does not point to the documentation directly. The following listing shows an example:

test=# \h SHOW
Command:  SHOW
Description: show the value of a run-time parameter
Syntax:
SHOW name
SHOW ALL

URL: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/sql-show.html

The URL is really useful here. It avoids a lot of unnecessary searching and digging.