pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> 1) Strenthen the importance given to the core component
> which I beleive is the plant database.
> Thats the info people really want and should be where we focus
> most energy.

Second that...

> 2) Guilds, I do like the idea and I think it could be
> an important tool for helping people think about their
> gardens/farms in a more intergrated manner. A little
> senario:
>
> Farmer Giles is interested in growing corn on his land.
> He looks up corn in the database.
> In the listing he finds a reference to the Corn/Squash/Bean
> guild....

I like your scenario.
Would that be the famous Giles of Ham?

> Its been very interesting listerning to the debate
> about Guilds as a thinking tool vrs Guilds as a recipe
> book. It would be nice to see this debate in a wider
> forum as I think the theres a need for a lot more
> talking about guilds in the wider PC community.
> Maybe having a Guild database would encourage such.

How about pitch this comment (guilds as recipie, concept, etc.) out to the PC
list(s) in general?
I would but I've got the PC list turned off right now as I'm in
transit/transition/on the road/etc. etc. for a while and don't have bandwidth
for it.

> Snag is html is farily limited in what you can do
> for user input

To me it's more 'clunky' than 'limited' - complex input can be solicited but
it's not always in the coolest possible way...

> (a good bit of graphics could make things
> a bit better than standard html forms.

What do you have in mind for that?

> A lot could be done with a dedicated client
> something like a Java applet (or possibly flash).

Alas, not open source.  I do want to keep this open source, at least for our
part.

If third parties want to build non-open-source fat clients on top of the open
source core that's fine by me though.

> Some of the things you could do with a smarter
> front end:
>
> Use a tree style interface (like in windows explorer)
> to navigate through the the different plant uses.
> These quite nicely group into a tree structure
> three levels deep say
> Other Use -> Building Materials -> Thatching

Good idea.
This doesn't need to be client side, IMO shouldn't be.  Can be server side,
and using open source tools and generating only valid HTML/XHTML, maximizing
access to all client comers via web standards.

> Having ricer relationships has implications on
> backend design, in particular the table design for the
> relationship. You could have an extra field with a textual
> description of the relationship.

Again I will mention that this whole gig seems a natural for an object DB and
a PITA for an RDB.
Then again I won't be wrestling with normalizing all those tables and writing
those complex and convoluted queries, so why do I care? ... ;-)



John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Design & Technology Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net