BigOven

I've been working my way through the gigantic backlog of food & cooking magazines I've amassed over the years (some dating back to the 1990s!), entering recipes into BigOven. Fortunately, many of these recipes are available online allowing me to take advantage of BigOven's Screen Import (ctrl+i) functionality. This period of intense importing has generated the following wish list for future versions of BigOven...

* Auto-format title case on imported recipes. Many recipe sites list their recipe titles in ALL CAPS, while I prefer to use Sentence Case for Titles. BigOven should automatically twiddle the title case to a user-configurable choice (off (leave as formatted), Sentence Case, ALL CAPS, or lower case) after the "Import!" button was pressed on the Screen Import page.

* Auto-cap first letter in ingredient name (allow user to toggle this behavior in settings).

* Handle special characters like "&" throughout BigOven. With "Food & Wine magazine" as a source, I would really like to see this feature added. At the very least, the user should be warned if they enter an illegal character. I've mentioned this elsewhere.

* Longer source field. In this world where a source might be a magazine name, issue date, year, page number, recipe author, and website, it would be useful to have MUCH MORE storage for sources! I've mentioned this elsewhere. At the very least, BigOven should warn the user when they run out of room in the Source field.

* Understand plurals on units. BigOven understands "tablespoon", but not "tablespoons" (ounces, teaspoons, etc) in the Unit field. A related request is that if I enter a QUANTITY that is plural (1.5, 3, etc) then BigOven should intellegently complete the Unit selection with plural choices.

* Handle "1 cup plus 2 tablespoons" quantities appropriately. I'm not sure the best way to handle it, but it would be nice if BigOven had a specific recommendation on these types of quantities.

* Allow text styling in instructions and notes. Bold, italic, underlined, etc. Additionally, since BigOven is web-aware, text that starts with "www" or "http" should be treated as links.

* Allow recipe linking. I've mentioned this elsewhere.

* Duplicate NOTES/TAGS tab functionality on EDIT screen. This is somewhat difficult to explain. After I click "Import!" to finish a Screen Import, I spend some time tweaking the recipe on the EDIT screen. It would be nice if the EDIT screen was an all-in-one screen and included the contents of the NOTES/TAGS tab, so I didn't have to tab over there to complete the edits. I've mocked up a suggestion of how it might be implemented -- it's on my website at http://www.drewvogel.com/images/EditTabIdea.jpg.

* Allow resizing (and remember the size between sessions) of the Tags for this Recipe pane.

I know some of these ideas are 'larger' than others and that you're feverishly working on the 2.x series of BigOven. Still, I wanted to get these items out there to begin the conversation.

When I said Duplicate NOTES/TAGS tab functionality on EDIT screen, I guess I should have requested something like a "quickedit screen" -- somewhere where it is possible to edit everything in one screen. I was explaining the feature request to a buddy of mine. He said, "Oh... A quickedit screen".

And, yes... That's what I'm looking for!

Drew,

Those are some interesting ideas...

I am ALWAYS "Title Casing" the Recipe Titles and Ingredients :-)

I really love the Screen Import, and I always go to tweak the recipe afterward. Often I have to  fix up the ingredients (because a recipe writes "1 cup chopped walnuts" not "1 cup walnuts, chopped"), but I don't mind giving it a nice look over and cleanup in the regular interface.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that sometimes the Import doesn't recognize discontiguous areas, for instance, if the recipe is broken into two parts (aka a cake and a frosting), but I want to keep it all together (with those nice little ingredient headers!), and I highlight the first set of ingredients, then the first set of instructions, then the second set of ingredients, then the second set of instructions, it tends to loose 1/2 of the recipe in the Import. 

Example:

Cake
Ingredient 1
Ingredient 2
Ingredient 2

Frosting
Ingredient 1
Ingredient 2
Ingredient 2

How to make the frosting....

/End Example

I tend to use the "Source" field judiciously, usually only using the name of the website or magazine, then including details in the the Notes field (full URL, notes, copyright notice, etc)

Heather

Thanks -- yes, we agree this is a great list.

Just a note Heather -- the Screen Import sections will not work with discontiguous sections in its current form.  The best workaround for this is to use ctrl-x (cut) and ctrl-v (paste) to shift around the text a bit before defining the areas.  Thanks!

Hi Heather. Generally, if a recipe has two components and I think that one of them might be useful in other applications, I will split them into two discreet recipes -- using your example, the first recipe would be the frosting and the second would be the cake. The cake recipe would have an ingredient line that said, "1 batch Famous Frosting" with a note that said, "Included in this collection".

A perfect illustration of why linked recipes would be very useful. I could see the export task and the printing task 'asking' the user if they're like to export linked recipes as well.

A few more thoughts on screen-importing into BigOven, for consideration for future versions of the product. Here's my workflow now:

1. Locate a recipe I want to enter in one of my magazines. Search the associated website to see if the recipe is online and if a picture is available.

2. If a picture is available, save it to my local drive.

3. Search BigOven's recipe boxes in case I've already entered the recipe.

4. Copy & paste the recipe text from the website to my local text editor.

5. Manually process the text file -- twiddle case on title (Make It Smart Sentence Case), check/replace special characters, move blocks of text around (group NOTES items together, for example). Highlight & copy the modified text into the clipboard.

6. Within BigOven, ctrl-i to launch the screen importer. Highlight all the appropriate sections and click the buttons. Finally, click "Import".

7. Click "Rate" on the "View" tab. Click "I haven't yet tried this recipe", enter Active Time & Total Time (if known) and click "OK".

8. Click the "Edit" tab. Check that everything imported okay, moving instructions around as necessary ("chopped parsley" becomes ingredient "parsley" and notes/prep "chopped", for example). Fix "tablespoons", "ounces", "pounds", etc, which BigOven doesn't understand as Units. Specify "Cuisine" and "Main Ingredient", if known.

9. Click "Notes/Tags" tab. Click "Edit..." and select tags for the recipe. If there is a picture, "Browse" for it and attach it.

10. Finally, go to the "View" tab and make sure everything is okay.

BigOven should perform a dupe check as early as possible and notify the user of any suspicion of duplicates -- maybe it could do a quick dupe-check on the recipe title as soon as the title is identified in the screen import.

Ideally, the BigOven Screen Import dialog should contain MOST, if not ALL, of the options in steps 7-9, above, on one screen. Certainly Active/Prep time, would I make it, rating, main ingredient, cuisine, picture, and maybe even tags should go into that dialog. If those items are moved around, and BigOven is educated about plural units ("tablespoons", "pounds", etc), then we've gone a long way to improving the convenience of the screen import. I don't see any way to eliminate the need to manually fix "chopped parsley".

vogelap:

A perfect illustration of why linked recipes would be very useful. I could see the export task and the printing task 'asking' the user if they're like to export linked recipes as well.

Awesome idea that - I can think of many ways I would use it.  

All of these are great suggestions! 

Some of these that have also been an issue for me: 

 * Handle special characters like "&" throughout BigOven.

I've thought this many times!  Especially for commas and dashes in the title field; I can understand not being able to use "illegal" characters in the recipe title if that character would not normally be able to be used when saving a file in a computer, however I really wish I could use commas and dashes in the recipe title (if I'm able to do this, I haven't figured it out yet).  Since I can use commas and dashes when I save files on my computer, this seems like it should be possible to implement in BigOven.  If it can't be implemented, then I second the request for a warning.

 * Longer source field.

I've had many a source cut off without knowing it until later (I've learned to check now).  If the source field cannot be made longer, then a warning when the size limit has been exceeded would be nice (or just not letting any more letters be typed).

 * Allow text styling in instructions and notes.

The issue I've run into with this is not being able to put an accent over the "e", for example "file gumbo" just doesn't read right without the accent, while other things, such as "saute" may be easily figured out, but look funny when printed (if this feature exists, I would very much appreciate learning how to use it!).

Cheers,

Liz