Webmaster's Notice on Developing
Woodworking and Numeric Test Areas
The original mandate that started the TAXA Wood Knowledge Base was actually to locate
and document as many species of woods and woody plants. The research that has been done
over the last decade has brought forth a massive collection of data, most of it still to
be added into TAXA's database tables. There is so much to add infact, that it could take
as much as 2 years to do all the entry!
Because of the massive amount of work to be done in the near future on
completing certain programming tasks and, far more, the huge amount of labor that
will be needed to finally include the research data found over the past decade, it has
been decided to have a lengthy postponement on completing the programming and data
populating of both the Woodworking Data and the Numeric Data sections in preference to
finishing the content along lines closer to the original mandate of recording the woods
of the world. These two areas are not totally abandoned but will unlikely be completed
for at least one or two years till the other data is added.
State of Progress to Date - The audience for the data and information
that these delayed sections appeal to are considerably more specific than general
knowledge of wood. Woodworkers naturally will wish to know what each wood is like to
work with. Numeric test data is especially of interest to engineers and architects.
Knowing these knowledge functions are quite narrow and specific in contrast to general
wood descriptions and data, in planning it was decided that these areas should be made
visible only on specific choice by the readers. That part of the code is done and works
fine. If neither information on woodworking or numeric properties are wanted, the report
forms for them do not show. In contrast, the reader can make either or both function
forms to show.
The forms that do show at this point are stubs. The database tables have not been
created and the forms are therefore not yet linked to any data. They will remain that
way (as explained above) for an extended period. The exception to this would be if
considerable new resources in money and labor were found to speed progress or, similarly,
one or more volunteers came forward to help implement them earlier. My apologies for those
that may have specific interest in these knowledge areas.
Bill Mudry, Webmaster and researcher
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