I did a search in the daylily data base and put in 5 for bloom size and pulled up bloom sizes ranging from 4.5 up to 7.5, is there a range of sizes it pulls up?

Unfortunately that is just a static field and not very useful for searching. I think eventually we will transition all these kinds of fields into 'ranges' so you can actually use them for searching. Until then fields like this are really only useful when looking at the specific plant, rather than for searching.

Well, it seems to be already pulling up a rage!

Nope, it just pulled up anything with a 5 in the number: 4.5 and 7.5.

Not everything with a five in the number. Not 3.5, or 3.75, etc. don't see a pattern to it.

Oh, I see it just pulled up everything in the search that met the other criteria, and had a five in it?

That's right.

I had been toying with the idea of "cleaning up" the Lettuce database usage of inches and feet - converting in. and " to "inches" and ft. and ' to "feet".

That seems a waste if you might create the range sliders in the next year or so ... or should I go ahead?

If I do, is there any preference for always using the plural, even if it is "one feet"?
Any preference between "18 inches" and "1.5 feet"?

RickCorey
I thought engineers would be using the metric system.

If that's all you're looking to change, Rick, I would wait. But if you were going to do that simultaneous to other data points, then by all means, do.

Never, ever type "1 feet," Rick.

I can probably automate a conversation from quotes to inches or single quotes to feet.

That's tricky, isn't it? Some people add descriptive comments in the height and spread zones and put quotes around some of the words. Should be amusing to read: Resembles a "spindle" would become Resembles a inchesspindleinches.

And can the system distinguish between single quotes and apostrophes? I'm not a programmer, but I suppose you have ways of fine-tuning these conversions, such as specifying that the single quote must be followed by a space. That would eliminate most, but not all, of the apostrophes.

It would be so much easier if people could just follow instructions and stop using single and double quotes for measurements.

There will always be a percent of any population that will not read a message, even if it is in red letters in a huge font, surrounded with flashing signs. It's a truth about life that I've come to accept.

I can do pretty well with distinguishing things. First off, I can run such a script only against the fields that are likely to need it (Height, etc.) So if a quote appears in the Height field, 99% of the time it is referring to an inch.

And I can do other things like only make the change if the quote mark comes immediately after a number. So 10' would match but Zuzu's rose would not.

(Edited to add: cross-posted! Great minds think alike.)

That's impressive, if people have scattered single quotes around variety names like:

This has bigger heads than 'Little Gem', but smaller than 'Forellenschluss'.

I guess you can limit "replace" operations to single fields, and those free-text-numeric-range fields ought not to have much chatty text in them.

>> But if you were going to do that simultaneous to other data points, then by all means, do.

No, I ran out of things to say about lettuce. I was thinking about mining 2015 seed catalogs for new varieties to add, but I like to have at least two sources before adding info to the database.

>> I thought engineers would be using the metric system.

The aviation world is very conservative. We measure speed in knots or feet per second ... because the Wright Brothers did it that way.

Units are always a pain. In one project, "tire pressure" was scaled or used different units THREE different ways, depending on which system the data was being sent to.

Sometimes "standardization" is five different people all screaming "do it MY way".

(I think one of the Arianne crashes was due to different units being used in different parts of the software, but someone forgot to convert. )

Also, "compatibility is everything". If those fields had been easily searchable , sticking to one system or the other would have been vital.

Also, I grew up with inches and can visualize those easier than cm. On the other hand, "3/64ths of an inch" means nothing to me, but I can visualize 5 mm.

>> Never, ever type "1 feet," Rick.

Never when speaking English, but I make no promises if I ever construct a database. Text comparisons can fail if one word has a SPACE after it, and another doesn't. Unless you use a TRIM function.

Plant Height and Plant Spread should be the only fields where this will be necessary. The system itself uses double quotes in the field for Flower Size, so they're allowed in that field.

This probably won't be that hard for me to do.

The hard part, though, will be updating the code to allow ranges. It's not a simple thing internally at all, but boy would it ever be great!!

The complexity of converting our existing entries to a system of ranges seems staggering. Is it absolutely necessary? People have used different methods to describe plant height, for instance. Some already use ranges (3-4 feet), for example, while others state the maximum (up to 50 feet). I know the ranges will be a great aid in searching by characteristics, but how will the system handle a plant that's "up to 50 feet." How many ranges will the plant fall into?

I see what you mean. I'll have to think on that challenge.

I don't understand. I may be missing something obvious.

Isn't a range represented by just two fields: the lower number, and the higher number?

Searches for "larger than X" would list entries with the lower field greater than X.

Searches for "smaller than Y" would list entries where the upper field was less than Y.

"Up to 50 feet" would have an undefined or blank lower number. Too bad that would make it difficult to find in search for "greater than 20 feet", but that's the data that was entered.

I wonder if an entry like that is describing tree height from seedling forward, not "mature" heights, It would surprise me if many 40 foot (mature) trees had mature heights of less than one foot.


I know a lot of manual work will be needed to convert existing free-form text, or just to proofread the results of an automated process. But that work could be done by any volunteer with time, not just the experts with experience and specialized knowledge.

(Whimsically) ... 16,000 members and 650,000 plants. That's only 40 plants each.