pcplantdb

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

John Schinnerer wrote:
> It's a fine idea to have the wiki collect data for the eventual plant
> DB.  But as your conversation recognizes, to automate moving data from
> the wiki to the DB, the wiki data schema has to match the DB schema. 

As I will occupy all time I have available to entering data into the wiki
(and into my website) I will leave porting it to the db to others. I want
a record of and my own copy of contributions I make to the db. Rich needs to
let us know what the nonpaying public will be able to access in PFAF and what 
they
can do with information resources thet derive from PFAF. As I have spent over 
15
years doing what I do on the Web without pay I have a special interest in the 
open
source information concept. I understand PFAF needs income but for my 
purposes I want
what I donate to PFAF to be made available to the public for free. Otherwise 
I should
make my contribution in the form of input to the Wiki. Regarding that, the PC 
Wiki
is in my ibiblio account and I alone control it. However, if anyone is uneasy 
with my
"owning" it, I am willing to move it to another website, one that I will have 
ibiblio
create for us, something like pcwiki, The Permaculture Wiki, The Open 
Permaculture Project Online.
It can be set up with access to a group of us who will have write permission 
to the filesystem
(having several people doing work there might make maintenance and upgrades 
easier).
Those with group access to this website will have to be content providers 
(you need to build
and maintain your own website) and have accounts on ibiblio. If anyone is 
serious about following up
on this let us know here in the list and we can discuss pursuing this option.

> It would be easy enough to put up a form for entries to the wiki that

Keep in mind that wiki does not use html and you'd have to watch out about 
wiki words
which could be a problem with text preparation, though there may be a 
workaround,
but that may require some special simple wikicodes which would have to be 
removed before
the data was entered into pfaf. Shouldn't be that much of a problem though.

Automating porting of plantdb data from the wiki directly into pfaf might be 
a problem,
so it might have to be done by hand - still what pfaf finds in the wiki will 
be a freebie
for them to use as they see fit, unless the group wants to use the gnu (?) 
copyleft license.

The form used to enter db data in the required format into the wiki (a great 
idea)could actually
become a plugin or an existing plugin could be used with switches or 
modifications (WikiForm).

> people want to automatically put into the DB when it's ready.  But that
> requires the DB to be far enough along that the wiki form could match
> the DB input needs.
>
> Seems like a bit of a chicken-egg problem.  Until the DB structure is
> well-developed, the wiki can't use it to start gathering data.  So
> seems like the DB content/structure needs to be the immediate focus.

The Wiki can begin collecting data anytime and the sooner the better.

LL
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php/london