permaculture

[Jack Rowe <jackrowe@compuserve.com>]

Interesting and intriguing ideas from Keith Elwell-Gavins and Joe Dalsin...
Both ideas are valuable and would interact well with each other... 

Sharing designs is a wonderful idea, especially to we here in the Temperate
Zone, where the techniques of Permaculture as specified in the Design
manual sometimes need a degree of adaptation. I often find confusion among
experimenters resulting from taking tropically-adapted ideas verbatim from
"The Book" and applying them in higher-temperate latitudes. And the entire
permaculture "thing", albeit composed of many, many old -- even ancient --
ideas, is "new" enough that the sharing of ideas and applications is still
very important.

Keith's CorelDraw idea is great, the use of vector-maps instead of bit-maps
good also... iconic symbols could "easily" be produced by an
architecturally- or artistically-oriented person with a scanner, and a
customized version of CorelDraw, etc. could be the vehicle... licensing
problems, possibly. Or something which could be distributed for use with
CorelDraw that wouldn't be based on distribution of the actual program...
users would need their own CorelDraw.

I feel these kind of software solutions are important and am presently
working on a database for use with the Microsoft Access database program,
for use by non-profits to keep track of mailing lists, membership
categories, IRS tax-form-based accounting, etc. (not of much use to those
of you in Australia, of course, but the core idea is the same). Many people
who could be contributing to the body of information or work are, I find,
held back by those same details which others of us find less daunting... I
am having to produce the database for my own work, anyway, as Keith is
doing with his Corel program, and with a little fiddling in the end, these
types of fairly-involved efforts can be generalized for sharing.

Good luck with your CorelDraw project Keith, I hope someday to see a
generalized version offered which I and others can purchase from you or
your organization! Ditto the archived design-plan collection, Joe. Perhaps
we'll hear something from the already-overworked Lawrence London on Joe's
idea. And of course, by using scanners, anyone's drawings can easily be
turned into computer-viewable maps and shared among compatriot surfers... 

Jack Rowe
Seeds of Texas Seed Exchange
PO Box 9882
College Station, TX 77842
jackrowe@compuserve.com