[pd-discuss] Flowchart based Public Domain calculator API call

[Rufus Pollock]

Wow Maarten, great work! Comments inline below.

On 11 February 2010 08:53, Maarten Zeinstra <mz at kl.nl> wrote:
> HI all,
> I am happy to announce that a preliminary version of the flowchart based
> automatic public domain calculator can be tested (a bit) on
> test.kl.nl/API/?json=

Great stuff. I've now deployed the results of our coding efforts in
Luxembourg onto publicdomainworks.net:

<http://www.publicdomainworks.net/api/>

As yet I haven't connected this into our actual calculators [1] but
that is next on the agenda.

[1]:<http://knowledgeforge.net/pdw/hg/file/tip/pdw/pd/>

[...]

> This will be communicated using json, a json structure would look like:

[...] - I've snipped the json because it was rendering poorly in my
email client (all flattened) but this is really nice. Would you be
able to update the wiki page documenting/speccing the API with this
info?

I also think one thing that would be really nice (but it obviously
requires a backing db such as PD works) is for the API to be able to
do a bit of work such as determining author death date just from
author name (i.e. for the API to match an author name against a
relevant author object). My guess is that most human users of a
calculators won't always know all relevant information.

> Which will perform the calculation. Now it will state 'Uncertain, lacking
> information' this is because is now standardly based on Generic European
> flowcharts and hits a wall at the "Is at least one of the authors of the
> jurisdiction"

This might be where the uncertainty field comes in. It would be nice
to give an approximate answer in cases where you have 95% of the
relevant info (and the author jurisdiction item is very minor ...)

> The programming is now in a test phase but I could really use some help
> transforming flowcharts into XML structures
> If anyone wants to help this cause please contact me! :)

I'm happy to help though you know my preference for code over XML ;)

Regards,

Rufus