pcplantdb

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

John Schinnerer wrote:

> Meanwhile...
> I am wondering if anyone else is wondering what happened to some of the
> IMO most fundamental PERMACULTURE-CENTRIC aspects of PIW.

Maybe some things are on the back burner but I am not aware of anything 
gone missing that we initially thought worthwhile including. We could 
take a features inventory.

> I am thinking at the moment of 'inputs' and 'outputs', e.g. what a plant
> needs and what it provides.
>
> Besides being most basic and useful for PC design purposes, this also
> provides information that can be 'mined', correlated, etc. to determine
> potential relationships.
>
> As far as what I thought we were up to with this phase one of the project,
> I thought the idea was to create a PERMACULTURE-CENTRIC plant database,
> and IMO that means at the very least we must be able to search for,
> return, add and edit PC-centric info such as 'inputs' and 'outputs'.
>
> Since afaik info of this nature doesn't much exist as such in our startup
> (PFAF) dataset, let's not forget to include it in the DB just because it's
> not in our startup data.  Let's consider what else of a PC-centric nature
> also doesn't exist in our startup data and include that also.
>
> In other words, I'm concerned that with so much initial data of a certain
> meta-type, we are missing and/or forgetting to think about and implement
> more PC-centric aspects that are not present in PFAF data or
> functionality.
>
> There is some info on 'inputs' and 'outputs' in PFAF data.  However IMO
> it's not easily recognizable as such, and I assume therefore not readily
> searchable as such.
>
> For example, how would I get a concise result set of plants that provide
> fodder of a particular type, and/or for a particular animal?

enter search string then use an array of checkboxes to narrow results 
output

> How would I get a concise result set of plants that thrive in acidic
> tropical soil conditions (considering this as an 'input')??

use an array of nested checkboxes to narrow results
[box 1] soil type, if known; use technical language or common words
[box 1a]soil pH - ennter pH or words "acid", "very acid", "alkaline", 
"very alkaline"
- other words that might be used here: acid-loving, calciphobe, sweet 
soil, high calcium
[box 2] climatic conditions; use tropical, arctic, tundra, sub tropical;
use polar coordinates or country or continent + climate zone
Or use typical words: hot, dry, wet, arid, cold, cool
Then there's exposure preference: shady, filtered light, part shade, 
full shade, full sun, northern/eastern/western/southern exposure
And, daylength.