[postgis-devel] Issue 52 in postgis: Link SRID word to Wikipediaarticle about SRID

[Kevin Neufeld]

Obe, Regina wrote:
> Kevin,
> Would you want to link directly to spatialref, wikipedia in each example
> or just to another section in the docs?  I guess I like the idea of
> linking to one of our internal pages (which can link to spatialref,
> wikipedia etc. It is an extra hop, but I figure people will only look at
> it once and say "Yah I get it"). 
>
> There is also no way I'm going to remember to link to 
> w, x, y links for each example I do and god for bid if a worthy z came
> along. 
>   

Yeah, for that reason, it would be easier just to link to something 
we've got, and from there, recommend further reading sites.  But when we 
do, we should be mindful of Paul's recommendation back in June in the 
"WKT and Wikipedia" thread where he cautions about linking to something 
that's not an improvement on what we provide ourselves.

> I have mixed feelings about having the links right in the example. On
> the one hand I see the benefit of having it right there, but on the
> other hand
> I fear at a certain point it will get annoying since realistically it
> would appear in many examples.  
>
> Seems better to just train people to look at the "See Also" section when
> they are not throughly satisfied.  I really like the "See Also" section
> and thought that was a pretty useful layout idea you came up with. 
>
> Thanks,
> Regina
>   
Personally, I like the idea of having links right in the example.  It's 
like reading a Wikipedia article where all words that require further 
explanation have links to other articles.  Having lots of cross 
references make for easy learning.  But that's just my two cents.  For 
now, though, I agree that we could just expand the See Also section to 
include references to section 4.2.1 in such cases.  Later, once we've 
finished moving over all the functions, we can improve the cross 
references and other content.  (On a side note, I don't think it's even 
possible to put xref links in a preformatted block anyway - but we can 
tackle that if we decide to go that route later).

I agree with Mateusz that newbies often find the SRID concept difficult 
to understand.  So, in any event, we should add the upgrade to the 
Spatial_Ref_Sys Table section (4.2.1) to our TODO list. 

Cheers,
Kevin