pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

John Schinnerer writes:
 > Howdy,
 > 
 > First off, tonight's messages will probably be my last conact with
 > cyberspace for the next 8-9 days.
 > 
 > Second off, I walked through a couple botanical gardens here in Jakobstad
 > today, which reminded me to ask:
 > 
 > Have we/are we implementing common names in such a way that we can handle
 > languages other than English?
 > If we mean to be worldwide useful, we need to.  Plants whose common names
 > I knew in English had of course quite different common names in Swedish,
 > not to mention Finnish!

We could convert the column to Unicode easily enough I think.

 > Which leads me to this comment:
 > 
 > > One of the ways I see PIW moving is to more of an onion type data
 > > model.  While the permaculturalist may spend a lot of time on one
 > > layer of the dataset specifically the Genus species level.
 > 
 > Say Whaaaaaat?
 > I certainly won't, nor do I understand the origins of this assumption at 
 > all.
 > Walking through those botanical gardens, the latin gibberish didn't tell
 > me anything useful.  What did was either the common names or the groupings
 > of plants in the one garden, which grouped them by functions, such as
 > medicinal, fiber-producing, fodder, human food, etc. etc..
 > 
 > > The market
 > > gardener/farmer may spend most of their time on the cultivar level of
 > > particular plants.  Individuals involved with large scale land
 > > management may look at layers of information on the guild/plant
 > > community level.
 > 
 > I think someone working from a PC design basis will be using many levels,
 > whether they're a 'permaculturist' or any other 'profession' or
 > non-profession that has realized the benefits of PC design as a basis for
 > whatever they do.
 > 
 > The 'onion' concept is fine, actually.  My concern is with our assumptions
 > about who will use what layers and how those assumptions may implicitly
 > limit the usefulness of our system.

I realize that there has been a thread of enthusiasm for keeping the
database PC-centric.  What I'm saying above and here is not to refocus
the project but to point out that we are reaching a level where we may
have appeal to other groups as well.  In particular as of 0.3.0 PIW
users will be able to add plants and add cultivars to plants as well
as attach comments to both of these objects.  I know that market
gardeners and more conventional farmers will likely take interest in
information on the cultivar level.  Having a centralized source of
information about cultivars adapted to your locale sounds like a
pretty neat thing to me and also may sound like fundable ideas to SARE
and other more conventional agricultural groups.  0.3.0 will allow the
user contributed development of cultivar level information.  Whether
or not this happens is up to the users.

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