Permaculture Information Web

[Chad Knepp <pyg AT galatea.org>]

Richard Morris writes:
 > Chad Knepp wrote:
 > <snip>
 > > Know bugs:
 > > 
 > >   o Clunky user interface.  Open to suggestions on how to make things
 > >     work better here.  Non-obvious icons, etc.  Bear, we need you.
 > > 
 > Search box overflows surrounding blue square, on home page.

Yeah, the .css changed, but the corresponding php pages did not.  Bear
says he's not going to be available for a bit, so I'll try to make it
less ugly in the short term.

 > >   o General uglyness from putting different parts of Bears new stuff
 > >     together.  Reports don't match search results.
 > > 
 > >   o Inconsistencies in some forms (headers mostly)
 > > 
 > > 
 > > How to help:
 > > 
 > > I'm effectively going to be gone the 11th - 20th but for the next
 > > three days I can squeeze in some serious bug squashing if folks will
 > > beat up on this release for me.  Create an account and then try and do
 > > stuff.  DO NOT add a new botanical name unless you are adding a real
 > > plant that is missing.  Other than that you can delete anything you
 > > create so it's ok to just bang on the keyboard for data so long as you
 > > go back and delete it.  Alternately feel free to add real/actual data,
 > > there is no reason that this stuff can't stay that I can see ATM.  Let
 > > me know how it goes.  Ideally I'd like to release a bug fix release
 > > before the 11th.
 > > 
 > > Note to Bear: Feel free to edit all the good stuff in dev/ (esp. .css
 > > .js *php, dev/images/*, etc.) and remember you can also edit
 > > dev/cgi-bin/Eden/client/*html (head.html, tail.html, and search.html)
 > > which are the static html chunks that get wrapped around (search.html
 > > is the advanced search form) the output.  Make sure you tell me if you
 > > do so I don't clobber your changes with a new release.  
 > > 
 > Tried to login in, (even though I didn't have an account on dev),
 > just got "Your are not currently logged in" message rather than
 > a login failed message.

Issue this one so I can remember.  This reminds me that one of the big
changes in the server API is returning good descriptive error messages
to the client.

 > Email confirming login got caught by my spam filter. I guess a bit more 
 > text in the email with some blurb about "welcome to piw..." would help 
 > it get past filters.

Another good issue... got any text to contribute?

Speaking of which, we should have a page during account creation that
informs the user that use of this database constitutes consent to
license thier contributions under the CC license.

 > Adding a common name worked. I'd like to
 > a) specify the language of the name.

Adding language support (to more than just common name) will be a
pretty major feature... I'm going to suggest that we push this to post
1.0... unless you just mean a tag that says what language this common
name comes from.

 > b) Add a citation for where the name came from.

Easy enough, also could be a reference (like [134]) to an actual
reference.  Little concerned with how to display this info sanely
unless we break the common name field down to a much more verbose
format such as:

Common names:
Blahblah pant, contributed by UserX (USA, deep south colloquial)
...

Good issue material.


 > I've added some info from the Tanplants database
 > for Abies balsamea. http://dev.permaculture.info/cgi-bin/eden.py?plant=7

Very cool.

 > A few points: I'd like to make some of the terms added marked up, i.e.
 > similar to the Uses. Specifically suitable location.
 > 
 > I'd like to add some other book references.

Yes, adding new references was one of the things I forgot to include
in my Todo list.  References should also be first class objects and
be able to attach comments to them.

It looked like you were doing references in the comments.  I see
things like (36,63,74,75).  Do these correspond to the references in
the dataset?  If so, here's how to do the markeup.  First, I've been
putting [] around them, not ()... might be good to be consistent but
not ultimately that important.  The markup is kfml (Kung Fooey Markup
Language) and for references looks like <link ref="36">36</link> where
36 is the reference id.  The link tag can be used to embed any kind of
url information that Eden is aware of such as <link search="True"
basic_string="Malus domestica">Apple</link>.  

 > Length of Comment titles is limited. I'd like to add ones a little bit 
 > longer.

It's currently limited to 40 characters.  How many do we want?  75?

 > Apart from these I'd say superb, great, wonderful. This is really 
 > getting close to a great realization.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

 > Adding the tanplant data was relatively painless, being able to add it 
 > as sub comments to other parts really help in organizing info.

Agreed, but looking at the data you added makes me think that some of
this stuff should be elsewhere... not in comments.  Root habit being
one of the things we talked about previously.  Five of the comments
have description in the title, which makes me think it should go in
the description.  Could we start an issue around schema changes so I
really start doing it.  I can think of at least the following to add:
root_habit, root_width, root_depth, fruit_desc., nut_desc.,
seed_desc., leaf_desc., stem_desc., flower/inflorescence_desc.,

You may notice that pages with lots of comments (such as the one you
worked on) load really slow.  This is because I forget to index the
columns it's using and there are close to 40k comments.  This will be
fixed in 0.3.1.

 > Great stuff.
 > 
 >      Rich


Cheers,
Chad

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