Re: Questionabl description in datatype.sgml

Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@postgresql.org> writes:
> In "8.13.2. Encoding Handling"
>    <para>
>     When using binary mode to pass query parameters to the server
>     and query results back to the client, no character set conversion
>     is performed, so the situation is different.  In this case, an
>     encoding declaration in the XML data will be observed, and if it
>     is absent, the data will be assumed to be in UTF-8 (as required by
>     the XML standard; note that PostgreSQL does not support UTF-16).
>     On output, data will have an encoding declaration
>     specifying the client encoding, unless the client encoding is
>     UTF-8, in which case it will be omitted.
>    </para>

> In the first sentence shouldn't "no character set conversion" be "no
> encoding conversion"? PostgreSQL is doing client/server encoding
> conversion, rather than character set conversion.

I think the text is treating "character set conversion" as meaning
the same thing as "encoding conversion"; certainly I've never seen
any place in our docs that draws a distinction between those terms.
If you think there is a difference, maybe we need to define those
terms somewhere.
        regards, tom lane