pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

Chad Knepp wrote:

> Richard Morris writes:
>  > Stephanie Gerson wrote:
>  > 
>  > > Allright folks.
>  > > 
>  > > Here's the vision, as promised.
>  > > 
>  > > *Please* take the time to read it and respond - this is a
>  > > discussion that must be had early on.  We ought to establish our
>  > > vision and high-level goals, and I present the following as a
>  > > part of this discussion.
>  > > 
>  > > .l.a...v.i.s.i.o.n.
>  > > 
>  > > I understand Permaculture as a systems science, seeking to weave
>  > > meaningful relationships between system components in order to
>  > > create self-regulating and regenerative systems.  System
>  > > components may be plants ,Ab??(B woven together to create
>  > > guilds, people/organizations ,Ab??(B woven together to create
>  > > communities, or otherwise.  Basically, Permaculture to me is a
>  > > form of ,Ab??(BBiomimicry,,Ab??(B applying the principles of
>  > > inherently- sustainable ecosystems (waste-as-resource, stacking
>  > > functions, etc.) to potentially all realms of human activity
>  > > (although it has thus far been primarily focused on those which
>  > > satisfy basic human needs).
>  > > 
>  > Snip snip snippidy snip
>  > 
>  > Great stuff, things are become clearer and I think I could
>  > see a way in which things could work together.
>  > Attached is quick picture of a posible top level
>  > graphical interface and below are the some of the topics
>  > discussed on the permaculture mailing list, the number is how
>  > many posts there were under that subject.
>  > 
>  >       53 where you from?
>  >       39 Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
>  >       36 creating online plant database
>  >       23 For the survival thread...
>  >       21 Where are you from?
>  >       20 Yeomans Keyline Plow Use
>  >       20 Worms
>  >       19 the hydrogen argument
>  >       19 planting bamboo over septic field
>  >       18 Out of Control
>  >       18 (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two
>  >       17 Permaculture wiki & wikipedia
>  >       17 Killer Coke
>  >       17 Black Locusts, more....
>  >       16 aquaponics
>  >       16 Ferrocement Building Project
>  >       15 Worms eat my crap?
>  >       15 Reed bed filtered swimming pool
>  >       15 Re:The American view of the world
>  >       15 RE: Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)
>  >       15 Biogas digester plans
>
> Wow interesting stats!
Yep I think it helps to get a feel of the sort of questions
people ar interested in.

Simply generated. I've been saving permaculture posts in a folder
since 2001 and

grep "^Subject" permaculture\ digest | sed  "s/Re: //" | sed 
"s/\[permaculture\] //" | sed "s/Subject: //" | sort | uniq -c | sort 
-rn | more

gives the list. The unix commands grep, sed, sort, uniq, cut
give a great db query language.

>  > With a bit of thought and a lot of discussion
>  > we can try to put these into some sort of graph structure.
>  > With each node as a specific topic.
>
> Also think of the relationships themselves as atomic elements, like
> for example, the kind of relationship worms have with soil and the
> relationship worms have with compost/vermiculture.  The relationship
> itself is information, not just a link. 

Indeed, it would be possible to give relationships a class.
Theres several systems out there which does this.

> I also think that things can
> have the relationship of being similar to other things (a set) such as
> animals or annual garden plants... sort of categories.  I think this
> relationship would be helpfull in generalizing some relationships such
> as chicken --> annual garden plants is largely the same as chicken -->
> cabbage and doesn't require just duplicating the same thing in chicken
> --> broccoli, chicken --> kale, etc.

First though was that you have really got
        chicken -> brassica
and the other links are really specialisations of the above.
Theres a very good case for data at the genus and family level.

However
        chicken --> annual garden plants
does not work so simpily as annual garden plants cross over many families.

>  > After a lot of work organising we could probably come up with
>  > a network representing much of permaculture.
>  > A touch graph type interface could make it fairly quick to
>  > navigate to the particular topic of interest.
>
> Speaking of TouchGraph, have you looked at it? 

Yep see

http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/pcplantdb/PlantFamilyTree/PlantFamilies.html

which is a touch graph map of the plant kingdom.


 I did some poking
> around it seems to have slowed/halted development sometime back in
> 2002... not that this means anything bad, it just isn't under active
> development.  It is also written in Java which means we could (if it
> doesn't already) pack it into a .jar and run it on a browser.  It does
> however mean that we are going to need to muck around in Java a
> bit... not that I mind though, Java used to be my favorite langauge.
> Actually Java and perl were my two favorites until I met python which
> is like the best of both.

Good to hear your into java, my fav language.
>  > In each topic we could have:
>  >   links to wiki pages
>  >   links to mailing list discussions
>  >   links to plant database
>  >   links to other resources, videos
>  >   links to other websites
>  >   links to a google search
>  > 
>  > The yemoans keyline plough is an interesting example.
>  > Few people not in the know will have heard about this
>  > so they will not search directly for it, however
>  > they may be introduced to the topic if they browse to
>  > a water systems topic.
>
> Yes, this seems to be the beauty of Steph's vision.
Indeed.

        ttfn

                Rich
--
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