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  • From: lflondon@mindspring.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] (fwd) Re: permaculture software (warning, long)
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:28:02 -0500

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 12:14:38 +1100, in alt.permaculture Craig Ambrose
<bast@vurt.net> wrote:


Those are some hefty requirements there Ute. :) To date, I've been
more
interested in the permaculture design of the site itself, rather than
the
resources and actions required to achieve the design. So while I
haven't
used CMS, it certainly looks a bit over the top for most people to use
(or
afford) to get stuck into permaculture design. Your point 2 would
definatelly be doable with my proposed software, amongst other things.

Since we have a livelly discussion going here, I'll describe our
current
design in a little more detail.

Entity Database
---------------

The simplest and possibly most essential part of the program is a
database
of entities. An entity is any type of "thing" which you might want to
use
in a permaculture system, such as a particular species of plant or
animal,
a water tank, a chicken tractor, and so forth. This database is not
revolutionary in itself, there are excellent plant databases and so
forth
out there, and I hope to make this database compatable with the most
popular ones so that we can get some usefull data in there straight
away.
The unique aspects of this, however, are that the database will be
designed
to handle all different sorts of entities (not just plants), and that
a
complex collection of entities can also become an entity in itself.
For
example, a herb spiral contains many entities, but a pre-designed herb
spiral could also be treated as a single entity if the user wishes.

Other planned features include being able to wack any other types of
information onto the entity (even if the program doesn't use or
understand
it), so that other programs could use it. For example, you might
include
cullinary uses, or medicinal uses, onto some of your plants, even
though
that may not really relate to site design. Also, entities will be able
to
be dragged out of the database which will export them as self
contained XML
files which include all the required data and graphics to email them
to
another person and share your interested data in that way.

One of the important sets of data attatched to each entity is their
interactions with other entities. Interactions take the form of
"products",
which are any component, action or yield, which an entity might
produce (or
require). Entities can produce products, at certain times, in certain
amounts, from certain locations, and distribute them in certain ways.
In a
similar fasion, entities can require products. Part of the system
designer
software's job (see below) will be to analyse the
production/requirement
interactions based on entities in the system.

I envisage that people will want to share data, and use data from
known
reliable sources, but will also want to experiment and slowly build up
some
reliable local data through personal experience. The database will be
able
to handle multiple sources of data, including rules for layering them
together. For example, perhaps you download a database to use as your
basic
information, but since you live in the tropics, you notice that tree X
takes only half as long to reach full height. In that case, you can
enter
that data in your own layer within that database, and set that layer
to
override other layers. So, you will use all the data provided in your
existing database about tree X, including images and so forth, except
that
it will override the single field (growth rate) that you have entered
data
for with the value that you have specified.

Like I've said, the database itself is not entirelly revolutionary,
and may
be usefull for many things other than permaculture, and we are hoping
to
release everything required to use the database fairly early on in the
project, and free of charge. We also want to provide extensive support
for
the database, and make improvements based on feedback, because we hope
to
impress people enough with the quality of our database, and our
customer
support, that they consider buying the full permaculture design
program
when it is ready.

System Designer
---------------

The aim of the system designer, is to let people apply some of the
permaculture design principles to a permaculture system, using the
entities
from their database, as well as information about the site. A system
can be
a simple construct which does not take place in an environment, or it
could
be a full site plan.

An example of the former case might be if you were attempting to come
up
with a guild of companion herbs that would work well together. You can
use
your database to try many different combinations of plants, and
analyse the
relationships. The resulting system could be saved and then you could
place
it on a real site to analyse how it might work for you in practice.
The
companion planting aspects I'm describing here might sound simplistic,
but
the idea is to present a system in varying degrees of abstraction
(levels
of visible detail) so that you aren't bombarded with too much data at
once.

To visualise these systems, we envisage allowing systems to be viewed
and
designed in one, two or three dimensions.

A one dimensional system is not at all usefull for actual site design,
but
it is very simple and might help in determining guilds or simply
analysing
how your current data behaved. In a one dimensional design, all
entities
occupy the same point in space, so all possible interactions will
occur.

A two dimensional view is a top down view of an actual site design.
Each
entity is represented by a 2D image, which can be scaled, moved and
rotated. There are some things which can't be represented in 2D as
well as
they can in 3D, but many computer users become lost when attempting to
control a 3D viewpoint, may spend more time wrestling with the program
than
actually using it. Also, by using a seperate 2D view (rather than just
a
top down view using the 3D graphics engine), we have a few advantages.
Firstly, the 2D view can be run even on very old computers that
wouldn't be
fast enough to render 3D graphics. Secondly, 2D views can easily be
printed
and the result will be the same as what you see on the screen. And
thirdly,
we hope to give the 2D view the look of an attractive colour
draftsperson's
drawing (such as the front cover of Mollison's "Introduction to
Permaculture") rather than attempt a more photo-realistic approach.

We hope that the three dimensional view will give a more realistic
use, and
could be used to visualise your system from many different angles.
Most
importantly, however, a 3D view lets you place your entities in 3D
space an
analyse the results. This is much more like a real system, where
things are
on top of each other, or on a steep hill. Obviously, importing 3D
terrain
visualisation is usefull here, and compatability with existing terrain
visualisation and GIS software is important.


The Development Process
-----------------------

I'm the first person to admit that some of our goals are fairly lofty.
The
3D graphics areas will be the most complex, not so much from a
technical
standpoint (I used to write 3D computer games for a living), but from
the
perspective of making it usable and usefull for the user.

Our goal then is not to attempt too much in one go, but to perform
cycles
where we add a few new features, and then thoroughly test and debug
and
ensure that we are still on track. At the moment, we haven't reached a
stage where we have a usefull program, but we intend to release
software at
several points along the way.

Firstly the database, as I've mentioned, we want to release free and
then
improve based on feedback.

We will then get the one dimensional view working, which tests the
data and
much of the analysis areas of the program. There probably isn't any
commercial demand for this by itself (feel free to tell me otherwise)
but
we will certainly welcome testers at this stage.

The two dimensional view comes next, and when the program is working
well
at this level, we plan to release version 1.0.

Adding the 3D elements will probably bring us to the second commercial
release (2.0) and would probably take quite a while to do.

Will will obviously release intermediary versions (1.1, 1.2 etc) when
they
are stable, either as free updates or for a small price (bug-fixes
will
always be free).

Internally, our contributors are members of a co-operative who do not
get
paid as they work, but we record all time spent on the project. Any
profits
made get divided up according to this ratio. Our main strategy to
combat
piracy is simply to provide very personal customer service (it's a
very
small market), and also to publish records of our current net profit,
labour input, average hourly wage and so forth, so that people can see
if
we are succeeding in our effort to make a living out of it. It is
certainly
unlikelly that anyone will become rich contributing to this software.

Target Audience
---------------

Our main target, at least with the version 1.0 release will probably
be
owner-designers without a great deal of knowledge of land surveying,
GIS
software or high tech site management stuff. Providing for the needs
of
design consultants is much more difficult, and some of these people
might
be willing to shell our a couple of grand for some of the existing
site
management packages (although they aren't permaculture focused).

I'm currently WWOOFing my way around australia as I work (thanks to a
solar
powered laptop), and I've already talked to a few people about the
software, including David Holmgren. David's views were cautiously
mixed,
and I would certainly like to hear from other professional designers
as to
whether this software could possibly meet their needs as opposed to
existing programs.


--------

Well, that was rather a long rant. I didn't cover everything, by any
means,
but hopefully I've provided plenty of fuel for more discussion.

thanks for listening

Craig




L.F.London ICQ#27930345 lflondon@mindspring.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech london@ibiblio.org




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