[mythtv] mythrecipe

[Christopher Flynn]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 09:56:24 -0800, Chris Petersen
<lists at forevermore.net> wrote:
> Keep in mind that "ingredients" are not "recipe ingredients".  Off-hand,
> I'd say that description is a list-summary, and text is a wiki-markup
> full detail for the ingredient.
Right, and then in recipe_ingredients you would parse the name field
and link the keywords (like lemon, flour, egg, etc...) to the
ingredient table to display information about said ingredient. (Much
like recipezaar)
  
> Yup, it's always been part of my plan to do this.  I'd also like to get
> a weight-watchers-esque point system added.  my wife knows the formula
> they use, and I figured it'd be cool to add in for those people who need
> to watch their weight (won't get into the diet war, but weight watchers
> is probably the only "good" commercial diet system out there)
Yes, fad diets really annoy the heck out of me. However since weight
watchers is, from what I understand, basically a simple way to count
calories. So I have no problems with this.

> > So in your recipe table you want to use the ingredient field to store
> >  ingredients in a list? (Kindof like how mythmusic stores music ids
> > in it's playlists)
> 
> No, the text field for "ingredients" was originally added to store the
> original hand-entered ingredient list -- I don't know if I would keep it
> around or not, but at the time I wrote up the tables I thought it was a
> good idea.  When a recipe is saved, this text is then parsed out into
> the recipe_ingredients table (which is incomplete).
Ok, it makes much more sense now.
 
> I came up with the idea of using keywords over assigning categories as a
> way to avoid the tedious task of assigning items to categories.  The
> idea is that organisation should my dynamic and fluid, and it allows
> people to create things that may not yet have a category.  When a
> category is created, or a keyword attached to that category, the item
> instantly becomes visible and falls into place.  It's also a LOT easier
> for non-geeks to think in terms of keywords.
I kindof disagree with you here. I think in terms of recipes,
categories have been around probably almost as long as recipes
themselves so I think people who use recipes are accustomed to having
categories. However I am open to new ideas. However I am having a hard
time understanding how this would work. What kind of keywords would
you map to what categories? I could see how anything with bread in the
title would be flagged as a bread category and such. However I have a
feeling that there are a lot of things that would be incorrectly
categorized. Unless I'm missing something?


> The idea is that you create a category tree (table 1) and recipes (table
> 2), and then attach keywords to each category (table 3) and recipe
> (table 4).
now when you say keywords, do you mean something like bread, cheese,
meat, etc... and if so, that is probably something the user would have
to enter in right? I just forsee certain categories (especially
regional type stuff) that you just couldn't pair up because you are
unsure of it.Take pasta for example, you could automatically assume
it's Italian but I know of some distinctly non-italian dishes that
also use pasta.

Personally I like the category layout over at
http://www.recipesource.com/ I just don't see how you could possibly
automatically categorize everything based on keywords without first
defining every possible keyword->category which is sure to have lots
of errors.

> You could go even further and create a dynamic category list, but it
> would risk creating something that the average user might have a hard
> time following.
What I'm thinking of is having essentially a 3 layer deep tree. The
first two nodes would be "by region" and "by type" then under those
would be either continents (ie. North & South America) and under type
would be "Main Dishes," "Snacks & Appetizers," etc...  then under
those would be either the country (Thai, mexican, frech, german,
etc...) and under say Main Dishes would be things like "meat,"
"pasta," etc...

I think having a basic category setup that we would allow the user to
customize would be good. Then we can generate a list of checkboxes for
people to choose from to categorize things. If you really want the
keyword thing, maybe you could have it initially suggest categories
but allow the user to override them.
-Chris

-- 
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Gandhi