[mythtv] mythrecipe

Chris Petersen lists at forevermore.net
Tue Nov 9 22:52:03 UTC 2004


> 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.

> 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.

Pretty much -- it's a formula based on calories, fibre and I think one 
other thing to get a score based on how the interaction between those 
things affects how your body gets energy from food.  And to do it right, 
you need to eat within a certain range of points, based on your 
weight/sex, so you don't loose too much weight too quickly.  I just know 
that a lot of people are into diet stuff, so I figured it'd be cool to 
add in if it's simple.

I refuse to add "no/low carb" type stuff, though.  I won't give into the 
unhealthy obsession people have with overconsuming protein and cutting 
vegetables out of their diets.

> 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 author assigns keywords to each recipe, and each category has 
keywords assigned by the category maintainer -- both of them independent 
of any name/description fields.  So for a recipe like "bread pudding" 
the maintainer would add keywords like "british pudding dessert" which 
would then be filed in any category with matching keywords.

It does get complex, though.  might want to make things smarter and add 
configs to categories so that a recipe would need to match 2 keywords 
(eg. both "british" and "dessert").  I hadn't gotten that far, yet.

> 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.

But non-italian noodle dishes are not usually called pasta.  and the 
"italian" keyword would not be added, so it wouldn't show up in the 
category marked "italian"

> 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.

yes.  but consider that most people will be searching, not browsing (or 
should be).  Even if a recipe isn't attached to a category, it will be 
searchable.

But you are right, it's sort of a double-edged battle.  my method is 
search-centric, not category-centric.  The categories are just a way to 
organize searches.  But that's how I cook.  I go to a recipe book with 
some idea of what I want, and immediately turn to the index.

> 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...

Ah.  I would categorize things far more specifically than that.  Would 
probably be something like:

Region
     S. Asia
     Europe
     Middle East
     N. America
     ...
Meal
     Breakfast
     Lunch
     Dinner
         Region
             Europe
             ...
         Diet
             ...
     Dessert
     Beverage
         Alcoholic
         Smoothies
         Coffee
Diet
     Diabetic
     Kosher
     Vegetarian

Categorizing food (or anything, for that matter) isn't a simple task -- 
I can't even scratch the surface here.

I'm all about multiple paths to the same destination.  I hadn't gotten 
far enough in my designs to concentrate on this, though.  Perhaps things 
like "meal" and "region" should be hard-coded into a recipe, if they 
have such limitations.  UI like this is probably the most important part 
of a good system, but I figured I'd tackle it in a linear fashion and 
get the recipe structure figured out first.

Anyway, like I said, I hadn't given a lot of thought to this idea.  The 
system I'm designing for work (unfortunately backburnered a few months 
ago) uses both keywords and category assignments, with the keywords used 
to show relationship between nodes, but not necessarily a parent/child 
relation.

A cool method would be to let users pick the category in plain english, 
and have the system spellcheck and sound-check and figure out where best 
to place it, creating new categories as it needs to, but that's more 
work than I want to spend on this.

I really want to change the way that people access data, and side with 
google on the idea that searching is key.  Categorization is good, but 
I've never seen a GOOD way to adminster a category tree -- nor is it the 
primary way that people look for information.  There must be a happy 
balance in there somewhere.

-Chris


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