pcplantdb

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

Hi all,

Congrats on the letter from Encarta to PFAF. It'd definitely increase 
visibility to a lot of users (and draw eyes from folk looking for the 
name of cabbage).

Last night I searched around, and played with some graphing engines, 
and producing dynamic XML from the database on the fly.
Here, I'm finding all the uses used by a plant Family, then graphing it 
out. You can start to see the connections/relatedness in terms of use.

Check out:
http://www.permaculture.info/test/graph/perfuse_dev.php

Proof of concept. Best proof? Hardly, but a start.

There are improvements I'd make on some of the settings for the physics 
of the graph, but I don't have access to that right now.
Still looking for the best system to use. A Flash/Actionscript app may 
play across more platforms, more smoothly, though the platform is non 
OS (if we wish to only use OS).
Java seems to have some compatibility issues (ie Firefox doesn't like 
the app on my system. :-P ). If anyone runs across Open Source graph 
viewers sent them my way.

There is also a free Hyperbolic graph viewer (someone sent a link to 
one a while ago). It works, and is pretty cool. I'm using a similar 
graph of family to uses with it, which is not the strong point of the 
viewer. It's probably best for (loosely or unlinked) tree graphs. A 
taxonomic tree for example. I won't upload it, since it's not quite 
useful yet.

Cheers,
Bear