pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

Richard Morris writes:
 > Chad Knepp wrote:

 > <big snip>

 > > There will be methods for free text as well as individual elements
 > > such as height.  Perhaps in the future we can develop a free text
 > > search grammar that allows uses a lot of control without having to use
 > > long forms that list all the various elements.
 > > 
 > I think there is an XML query type language. Might be worth 
 > investigating. I'd had good experience of passing XML as requests to 
 > servers.

Well xml may be a bit beyond the casual user.  What I had in mind was
expanding the existing controlled vocabulary and documenting
it... creating usable expressions like 'hardy to -5F' (or -2C), and
'full shade', etc.  Google has it's own grammar and folks have even
written books on it.  Anyway the goal in my head is to get to a place
where we don't have to have a form with 50+ check boxes in order to
generate a customized search.  The idea is already partially
implemented, but could be taken a lot farther.

 > <big snip>

 > > Ok, I gotta get back to it... hopefully have the client/server split
 > > done today!
 > > 
 > 
 > This is all sounding good. I think we should update the spec pages
 > with this. Might get onto it today if thats OK.

I'm not sure how anything I've said is a big change except for the
linkage between the html client and the server being a tight coupling
(i.e. no transport layer).  XML for clients is still on the table,
preferably, IMO, as xml-rpc, but possibly as an xml glue layer.

Cheers,
Chad

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