Assumptions (points to necessarily agree upon)
Two page preliminary design document for 'caca' (Cave Catalogue) rev.2 2013-07-26 by Wookey (copied from http://wookware.org/software/cavearchive/caca_arch2.pdf)
This is likely to change with structural change to the site, with style changes which we expect to implement and with the method by which the info is actually stored and served up.
... and it's not written yet, either :-)
CUCC still has an archive list of things that at one time were live tasks: from camcaving.uk/Documents/Expo/Legacy/Misc/... and that page is reproduced in the table below (so don't worry if the URL link goes dark when CUCC reorganise their legacy pages).
Troggle is a system under development for keeping track of all expo data in a logical and accessible way, and displaying it on the web. At the moment, it is [no longer] under development at http://troggle.cavingexpedition.com/ But note that this is Aaron's version of troggle, forked from the version of troggle we use. Aaron uses this for the Erebus expedition.
Note that the information there is incomplete and editing is not yet enabled.
Feature |
Old expo website |
Troggle: planned |
Troggle: progress so far |
|---|---|---|---|
Logbook |
Yes; manually formatted each year |
Yes; wiki-style |
Start at the front page, troggle.cavingexpedition.com/ [1] and click to logbook for year. The logbooks have been parsed back to 1997. |
Cave index and stats generated from survex file |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Survey workflow helper |
Yes; minimal. surveys.csv produced an html table of whose surveys were not marked “finished” |
Yes. Makes table of surveys per expo which shows exactly what needs doing. Displays scans. Integrated with survex, scanner software, and tunnel. |
See it at troggle.cavingexpedition.com/survey . Be sure to try a recent year when we should have data. Survex, scanner, and tunnel integration still needs doing. |
QM lists generated automatically |
Depends on the cave. Each cave had a different system. |
Yes; unified system. |
Done, but only 204 and 234 Qms have been imported from old system so far. No view yet. |
Automatic calendar for each year of who will be on expo when |
No, manually produced some years |
Yes |
Done; see troggle.cavingexpedition.com/calendar/2007 (replace 2007 with year in question) |
Web browser used to enter data |
No |
Yes |
Everything can be edited through admin, at troggle.cavingexpedition.com/admin . Ask aaron, martin, or julian for the password if you want to have a look / play around with the admin site. Any changes you make will be overwritten. Eventually, data entry will probably be done using custom forms. |
Cave and passage descriptions |
Yes, manually html coded. |
Yes, wiki-style. |
Not done yet. |
Expo handbook |
Yes, manually html coded. |
|
Not done yet. |
Table of who was on which expo |
Yes |
Yes |
Data has been parsed, this view hasn't been written yet. |
Signup form, System for keeping contact, medical and next of kin info |
No |
Yes |
Signup form should be ready by 20 Jan. |
Automated photo upload and gallery |
No; some manual photo galleries put together with lots of effort |
Yes |
Photo upload done, gallery needs writing. |
Search |
No |
Yes |
ckan is something like this - could we use it? esri online CUCC (troggle) http://cucc.survex.com/ - this site. virgina caves database (access+arcgis) (futrell) each country database Austria (spelix) ( www.spelix.at/ UK cave registry mendip cave registry: (access) www.mcra.org.uk/wiki/doku.php White mountains database (gpx + google earth) Matienzo (?) Fisher ridge (stephen cladiux) hong meigui (erin) (ask erin later) Wikicaves www.grottocenter.org/ multilingual, slippymap, wiki data entry. includes coordinate-free caves. focus on sport-caving type info (access, basic gear list, overall description, bibliography) e.g. australians only publish coordinates to nearest 10km turkey www.tayproject.org. www.uisic.uis-speleo.org/contacts.html change link. no-one looks for list of databases under 'contacts' graziano ferrari northern italy list (access + google earth)
Generally I'd like to find some people (geeks) that share these technical ideas: (1) store things in a file system, (2) use XML, (3) do not aim too high (do not try designing a general system for handling all caving-related data for the whole world). If I could find some people that agree with this, then we could try to reach a compromise on: (1) how do we store our data in a file system, (2) how do we use this XML (let's do a common spec, but keep it simple) (3) how do we aim not too high and not end up dead like CaveXML :) After we do that, everyone goes away to do their own projects and write their own code. Or maybe we have some degree of co-operation in actually writing the code. Normal life. But the idea is that all geeks working on "cave inventory" and systems making extensive use of cave inventories try to adhere to this framework as much as possible. So that we can then exchange our tools. I think things like "which revision system do we use" or "do we use web or Python" are really secondary. Everyone has their own views, habits, backgrounds. My idea is to work on this in a small group (no more than a few persons) - to get things going fast, even if they are not perfect from the beginning. If it works, we try to convince others to use it and maybe push it through UIS.
forms ----- 1) members read/write folk.csv and year/members 2) cave read/write cave_data, entrance_data, surveys/pics 3) trips -> logbook , QMs, or surveys (more than one survey or location possible) 4) logbook reads/write year/logbook 5) survey 6) prospecting app forms show who is logged in. databases --------- trips, read from logbook entry folder year#index .svx files description QMs members (cache from form) caves caves_data entrance_data storage: expoweb data/ cave_entrances caves descriptions loser foo.svx
frontpage --------- quick to load: Links: Caves number, name, location Years Handbook Data Entry Main Index Slippy map: Indexes to cave page Cave page: Access, description, photos, QMs, Survey Years: Logbooks/surveynotes/survexdata/people matrix Documents Data Entry: Logbook entry Survey data Survey Notes Cave description QMs Photos New cave Backend datafiles: caves/ cave_entrance cave_data directory of info years/ year/ logbook pubs/ reports admin/ lists who_and_when travel jobs surveyscans/ year/ index #num handbook/ (all static info) Storage: non-html or > 280K go in 'files' (PDF, PNG, JPEG, DOC, ODF, SVG) convert small 1024x768 version into website by default. (matching structure?
Since 2008 we have been keeping detailed records of all data management system updates in the version control system. Before then we manually maintained a list of updates which are now only of historical interest.
A history of the expo website and software was published in Cambridge Underground 1996. A copy of this article Taking Expo Bullshit into the 21st Century is archived here.