[pcplantdb] More geeky (and graphy) stuff
Bear Kaufmann
bear at ursine-design.com
Tue Aug 2 14:18:49 EDT 2005
Hi all,
Congrats on the letter from Encarta to PFAF. It'd definitely increase
visibility to a lot of users (and draw eyes from folk looking for the
name of cabbage).
Last night I searched around, and played with some graphing engines,
and producing dynamic XML from the database on the fly.
Here, I'm finding all the uses used by a plant Family, then graphing it
out. You can start to see the connections/relatedness in terms of use.
Check out:
http://www.permaculture.info/test/graph/perfuse_dev.php
Proof of concept. Best proof? Hardly, but a start.
There are improvements I'd make on some of the settings for the physics
of the graph, but I don't have access to that right now.
Still looking for the best system to use. A Flash/Actionscript app may
play across more platforms, more smoothly, though the platform is non
OS (if we wish to only use OS).
Java seems to have some compatibility issues (ie Firefox doesn't like
the app on my system. :-P ). If anyone runs across Open Source graph
viewers sent them my way.
There is also a free Hyperbolic graph viewer (someone sent a link to
one a while ago). It works, and is pretty cool. I'm using a similar
graph of family to uses with it, which is not the strong point of the
viewer. It's probably best for (loosely or unlinked) tree graphs. A
taxonomic tree for example. I won't upload it, since it's not quite
useful yet.
Cheers,
Bear
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