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Product review
The Compleat Botanica is a Windows PC software package with tools for
plant professionals and enthusiasts to organize, publish and share their
collections of plant data and plant pictures. Users will enjoy the special
tools for researching botanical and common names, for publishing plant
related Web pages, for printing high-graphics "plants in bloom"
reports, for preparing nursery placards and specimen markers, and for
organizing digital photographs.
The Compleat Botanica is the layman�s tool for a professional�s job. Designed
for serious gardeners of all walks: indoors/outdoors, vegetable/fruit,
natives/exotics, aesthetic/functional, flowers/herbs/trees. The advanced tools
are especially useful for boutique nurseries, plant societies, botanical gardens,
students of botany, and landscaping professionals. The Compleat Botanica fills
the empty niche left between Landscape Design Software and Garden Organizer Software.
The Compleat Botanica distinguishes itself by placing plant specimen at the center
of attention. Competing products offer focal points that are somewhat askew of the
plant aficionado�s real concern. This software makes no mistake here. Using a
database engine at its core, the software serves up collections of plant data that
the user can augment with data from their own sources. Whether it�s gardening,
horticulture, botany, nutrition, herbal medicine, agriculture, biodiversity or
taxonomy, this software has room for every plant professional�s area of interest.
Cumbersome database operations and obscure query commands are common stumbling
blocks to successfully using technology on real world projects. The Compleat Botanica
uses a new approach to tame the unruly nature of today�s sophisticated databases. With
an easy to grasp filtering system, the days of complicated queries has become a thing
of the past. Finding and displaying just the columns and rows that the user is
interested in has become an intuitive process.
Plant professionals who need a tool to capture and store plant-related data and
digital plant photographs will find the features that they�ve been asking for. With
digital cameras becoming ubiquitous, the need for a good set of tools for organizing
photograph collections has become pressing. This software handles digital pictures
with aplomb. On-screen each imported picture is displayed adjacent to its plant
specimen data. In reports, labels, and placards, pictures are handled with the same
expediency as any of the other types of graphical data. And when a user publishes
their collection to the Web, pictures can appear in abstracts, indexes, table of
contents, as well as on detail and summary pages.
Researchers will enjoy the online Gateway feature which links a user�s private
plant collection to the vast resources of the Internet. With just a few mouse clicks,
the user can search the major online plant databases and see up-to-date Web pages
within the software�s built in Web browser. Advanced users can develop custom scripts
to programmatically connect to their favorite Web site databases.
Anyone with a need to publish lists of plants will appreciate the hefty report
writer and the complementary publish-to-the-Web wizard. Using professionally prepared
templates, style sheets, and step-by-step instructions, producing crisp ready for
printing reports is a snap. Creating HTML based output destined for a user�s Web site
hosting service is no chore either. All in all, the software�s import/export and
print/publish features leave little room for anyone to remain with home grown Excel
and Access based solutions.
Plant professionals and amateurs alike can appreciate the care and attention to
detail that went into assembling the tools packaged with this software. Anyone
disappointed in the lackluster offerings of the competition owes it to themselves
to look into this new arrival.
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Product description
Organize your collection of plant related data and plant pictures using powerful database technology.
- Use your digital camera to develop your own online photo gallery. Organize your flower and plant pictures using proof sheets, thumbnail images, and report embedding.
- Cross reference your plant collection in multiple ways with custom categories.
- Search your data by phrases, words, or alphabetic strings.
- Set measurement units, temperature scales, and date formats to match your local conventions.
- Ensure accurate naming with the botanical name spell-checker and the extensive dictionary of plant names.
- Be professional with the assurance that proper International Association of Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) naming rules are used wherever botanical names appear.
Discover the hidden similarities between plants with a new approach to sorting and filtering that uses simple point-and-click query construction.
- See subsets of your data with easy to use filters - even database novices can create sophisticated filtering queries using the point-and-click interface.
- Use iconic data and color coded categories to replace abbreviations.
- Use common color names or Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) color chart numbers to describe plant parts with the precision you need.
- Enter rich-text notes to capture all of the diversity and special exceptions that you�re likely to encounter on real projects.
- Use the seasonal calendar of interest for an at-a-glance view of blooming, planting, harvesting, pollen producing, and special interest seasons.
Publish your collection to the Web using the built-in templates and style sheets - print indexes, table of contents, abstracts, trailside markers, tags, and nursery placards.
- Select from professional report style templates to create listings that make your collection attractive and readable.
- Eliminate the guesswork of report layout and design with the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) report previewer.
- Publish your data with HTML templates and CSS style sheets to create an instant Web presence for your business.
- Label your garden plants with custom formatted specimen tags.
- Turn your collection into an instant botanical garden with automatically supplied family names for all new database entries.
Research taxonomic groupings, plant uses, botanical names and common names; use the software�s Internet gateway to expand your research even further.
- Connect to online databases and see up-to-date Web pages from within the software�s built-in Web browser.
- Lookup botanical names using partial spellings when the true botanical name is unknown.
- Use common plant names as a starting point to find the true botanical name equivalent. Discover the beauty in such evocative names as love-bind, love-in-a-mist, love-lies-bleeding, and Shakespeare�s love-in-idleness.
- See the full botanical name hierarchy spanning 26 taxonomic ranks from kingdom to variety.
Collaborate with other plant enthusiasts using the import/export facilities to share data with other popular software.
- Share data between applications via HTML, XML or delimited files with the import and export tools.
- Partition your data into different projects with fully supported multiple databases.
Designed for you
- Plant enthusiasts: flower gardeners, garden clubs, indoor plant collectors, photographers, plant societies, vegetable gardeners.
- Commercial use: arborists, farmer�s markets, florists, herbalists, horticulturists, landscapers, nurseries.
- Plant professionals: arboreta, botanical gardens, botanists, conservators, ecologists, herbariums, restoration developers, taxonomists, wetland managers.
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Hardware prerequisites for The Compleat Botanica
The Compleat Botanica requires a personal computer with 250 MB of disk space, 64 MB RAM, and a monitor with a display
resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. Most of today's personal computers easily
fulfill these requirements.
Software prerequisites for The Compleat Botanica
The Compleat Botanica can be installed on personal computers with any of the
following operating systems:
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- Windows 2003
- Windows XP Home Edition
- Windows XP Professional Edition
- Windows 2000
- Windows NT
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The Compleat Botanica is not supported on
Windows 95,
Windows 98,
Windows Me.
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How to order
You can order online and we'll ship your order within 24 hours.
If you prefer you can print out our mail order form and
send it together with your check or money-order to:
Crescent Bloom
1313 Ferguson Rd
Sebastopol, CA 95472
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