It would be nice to get that cleaned up and consistent, but I don't intend to spend time on it myself. However, I know from attending a session on documentation at PGConf.EU that there are several potential contributors who would like to work on the docs but don't know exactly where to start, so I figured I'd raise it here as a good introductory project. I would love to take this on - thank you for flagging it as a potential first doc-hacking task. In the documentation, when we talk about secrets used for passwords authentication and similar, we use a mix of "clear-text", "cleartext" and "clear text"; in at least one place we also use "plaintext". There are several cases where we use "plaintext password" correctly, but we also have the variant "plain text" vs, "plain-text" vs. "plaintext" there as well. Just to confirm my understanding: 1. We should use "cleartext" and "plaintext" throughout, not "clear-text", "clear text", "plain text" or "plain-text". 2. There is at least one case where "plaintext" is used incorrectly in place of "cleartext".
Regards, -- Karen Jex ________________________________ From: Daniel Gustafsson <[email protected]> Sent: 06 November 2026 14:41 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Good beginner doc-hacking task: clear-text vs. cleartext vs. clear text vs. plaintext etc.. While working on a docs patch I realized that we use a wide variety of terminology for secrets that will not be encrypted, which is very different from secrets which will be encrypted; the former is IMO cleartext and the latter plaintext. In the documentation, when we talk about secrets used for passwords authentication and similar, we use a mix of "clear-text", "cleartext" and "clear text"; in at least one place we also use "plaintext". There are several cases where we use "plaintext password" correctly, but we also have the variant "plain text" vs, "plain-text" vs. "plaintext" there as well. It would be nice to get that cleaned up and consistent, but I don't intend to spend time on it myself. However, I know from attending a session on documentation at PGConf.EU that there are several potential contributors who would like to work on the docs but don't know exactly where to start, so I figured I'd raise it here as a good introductory project. If someone does take a stab at it, I will of course spend the time to review it. -- Daniel Gustafsson
