pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

John Schinnerer writes:
 > Aloha,
 > 
 > Stephanie Gerson wrote:
 > > I don't necessarily think that moving Eden onto Ibiblio is the solution 
 > > to this - we should just try to reach an agreement so that Chad and 
 > > others can get started.  If nothing else, I can show them the type of 
 > > design documents Archer was referring to.
 > 
 > Speaking of which, we don't even have a basic spec of any kind.
 > No need for volumes of yadda-yadda, but some fundamental statements as 
 > to what the phase one system will DO are IMO necessary.
 > For example:
 > 
 > Permaculture.info web application, phase one, will:
 > 
 > * enable authorized users to create plant entities within the 
 > permaculture.info database
 > * enable authorized users to input plant data into such plant entities, 
 > in various forms (string, text field, numeric, date, list, image, etc.)
 > * enable authorized users to edit plant entity data in various forms (as 
 > above)
 > * enable registered users to add discrete information to (annotate...?) 
 > a plant entity (narrative comments, additions/suggestions, etc.)

This is something I want but I'm not sure the whole group wanted it.

 > * enable anonymous users to search for (query the database on) plants or 
 > plant-related information using a variety of search fields including but 
 > not limited to:
 >    - name(s) of plant(s)
 >    - botanical characteristics of plants
 >    - functional characteristics of plants
 >    - location, climate, etc.
 >    - etc. etc. (I am just giving example of high-level spec - more 
 > details needed here)

My personal desire is to also provide an intelligent search that
queries all of aspects of the database from a single text box.

 > * implement initial plant entity creation, input, editing, annotation 
 > and searching  using css- and xhtml-validated web forms/web pages 
 > accessible by all browsers/internet devices.
 > * and so on...
 > 
 > The above example implicitly creates three user classes already - 
 > authorized, registered and anonymous - so that's part of a spec as well 
 > - user type definitions and privileges.
 > 
 > The above is also extremely high-level - a bit (but not too much) more 
 > detail would be a very good idea, such as inserting an eventual plant 
 > entity attribute list, details of search options/implementation, 
 > how/what of registered user annotation, and so on.

This is pretty much exactly what I had in mind to start doing with one
one addition and the questions where noted.  The addition being adding
relationship elements and allowing authorized users to create and edit
relationships.  The relationships would possibly be displayed in some
text/html way in a browser but would much more likely be used by our
GBI package (TouchGraph/FreeMind/whatever).

Heck, I'd call this a working document!

-- 
Chad Knepp
python -c 'import base64;print base64.decodestring("cHlnQGdhbGF0ZWEub3Jn")'