pcplantdb

[Bear K <bear@ursine-design.com>]

Hello all,

> I am very keen to have as much marked up as posible, I've attached an 
> image of a page from where I've got to with the pfaf db. In it I've 
> been trying to make things as graphical as posible with icons for 
> edible and medicinal ratings, type of plant (Tree, Shrub, climber 
> etc), height, width. The last three are included in resisable graphic 
> which gives a proportional tree height (code and icons available on 
> request).
> To do this the data needs to be easily extractable, either
> as fields or as marked up xml items.

I was actually going to suggest something along those lines. A book I 
have ('Edible Wild Plants') has a set of icons representing the 
different uses of the plant (flour, candy, milk, cooked greens, ...), I 
thought it would be cool to have a largely visual output for the plant 
information, including things like water use, light preference, etc. 
Given say 16 or 20 pixels each icon (aside from multiples like ranks, 
water, and light) you could present a lot of information in a small 
space. This could come in very handy if say there was a functionality 
to select a list of plants and then get a printable copy with info on 
the various plants. Of course this would just be one potential view 
option.

Attachment: Plant Icons 2.jpg
Description: application/applefile

Regarding XML, which I also think could come in quite handy, one issue 
would seem to be the speed of searching single fields filled with XML 
for specific properties. Seems like a slow process. Is it there fast 
method I'm not aware of?

I think it would also be great to have a relationship field for 
beneficial or antagonistic  relationships between plants. In the DM (pg 
62, 63) collecting this data is mentioned. Seems like a good place to 
gather it. Or was this already discussed?

Lastly, if ibiblio is slow to respond, I'm paying for hosting of 
OpenPermaculture with a rather good plan, so I can host there for a 
while if need be. I should be able to get chad an SSH account if 
needed. MySQL space is there, and available bandwidth.

Cheers,
Bear