LargoRecipes not only helps you track your own recipes, it helps you trade recipes with your friends and share your favourite recipes with the rest of the world on the web. It does this using an old format from the pre-Windows DOS days, MealMaster, as well as a powerful new technology called XML - in particular, an XML standard for recipes called RecipeML. You can find out more about MealMaster at the MealMaster home page. You can learn more about XML in general at xml.org, and more about RecipeML on the website of its copyright holder, FormatData.
If these terms are new to you, don't worry -- LargoRecipes makes it so easy to share recipes that you don't have to know anything about the underlying technology to use it.
It will help you understand what's in this section if you read the earlier sections first - but it isn't strictly necessary.
In this section:
If you chose to download the small version of LargoRecipes, these features won't work - you're
missing the part of LargoRecipes that handles them. To use these features, download the
full version from the installation page.
Importing one recipe
"Importing" just means bringing a recipe into LargoRecipes from another source. The recipe you want to import must exist on your computer as a file in MealMaster or RecipeML format. (A future version of LargoRecipes will let you import recipes directly over the internet, but for now you have to get the file first, then import it.)
There are literally hundreds of thousands of MealMaster recipes available for free on the Internet. You could start with Glen's MealMaster archive, which has 160,000 recipes. If that isn't enough for you, type MealMaster into any search engine and you'll find as many pages as you'd like.
RecipeML recipes are also getting easier to find. Using the Convert frame (see below), I converted 10,000 of Glen's MealMaster recipes into RecipeML and posted them in a RecipeML Archive. Recipezaar is another site I know of that plans to offer RecipeML recipes soon; for still more, use a search engine or look on the RecipeML website. (You can open both my RecipeML Archive site and Recipezaar from the Internet menu in LargoRecipes.)
If you aren't sure whether a recipe file is in RecipeML format, open it using
a text editor (like Notepad or Wordpad) or a browser (like Internet Explorer).
If the file is in RecipeML format, you should notice the word RecipeML somewhere
in the first few lines, maybe between angle brackets like this:
<recipeml>
The hoax.xml file we are about to discuss is a good example.
MealMaster files are a little harder to recognise by just opening them, but their names usually end in ".mmf".
Let's import a file! If you want, put LargoRecipes in demonstration mode by clicking LargoRecipes, then choosing Demonstration - you don't have to do this if you don't mind importing the recipe into your main database. Then, click Interface and choose Import. You see the import frame:
The top half of this frame is Java's version of a standard file dialog. In the screenshot, I've labelled the functions of the toolbar buttons, to help you if you haven't used Java file dialogs before.
Pick the recipe file you want to import. If it is a RecipeML file, you can make this
easy to do by putting it in the LargoRecipes xml folder, which is in the
folder where you installed LargoRecipes (on my computer, this is
C:\Program Files\LargoRecipes). LargoRecipes always starts the import and
export file dialogs in this folder. You can always navigate to any folder you like, of course;
for instance, there is a folder called mealmaster where you can conveniently
put your MealMaster files.
You will only be able to see
files of the type selected in the "Files of Type" box. To see only MealMaster files,
pick the MealMaster type; to see only RecipeML files, pick XML files. To see all files, pick
(surprise!) All Files.
LargoRecipes comes with one RecipeML file ready to import, called hoax.xml,
in its xml folder. Click that file and then click the Import button. In a few moments,
you'll see the new recipe listed in the Results list, below. You've
added this recipe to the LargoRecipes database! You can double-click the recipe name to
open it now, or return later and use the Fetch frame to fetch it.
The hoax.xml file is a slightly modified version of the standard test file
for RecipeML. See the RecipeML website for the original.
The version on the RecipeML web site appears to be out of date - it uses version 0.3 of
RecipeML, while LargoRecipes uses version 0.5 (published elsewhere on the FormatData website).
In version 0.3, the standard was called DESSERT instead of RecipeML, so I've changed references
to DESSERT into references to RecipeML throughout hoax.xml. (Note that LargoRecipes
will probably reject RecipeML files constructed with version 0.3 or any other version besides 0.5.)
RecipeML includes many different tags (a tag is a way of including a data
element in an XML file). LargoRecipes supports only a subset of these tags. If your
RecipeML file contains other tags, LargoRecipes will report an error. These are
the tags LargoRecipes supports:
Importing many recipes
If you have lots of RecipeML files to import into LargoRecipes, the BulkImport frame is the way to do it. (Importing lots of MealMaster files currently requires two steps: first convert from MealMaster to RecipeML, then import as described here. I may simplify this into a single step in a future release.)
To get started, put your RecipeML files in the xml directory, in the folder where
you installed LargoRecipes. Click Interface on the main menu, then pick Bulk import. You see
this frame:
In the current version of LargoRecipes,
this frame takes a long time to open if you have a lot of recipes. For now, please be patient;
in a future release, I'll fix this so the frame opens quickly. See
bug 650263.
For now, concentrate on the top half of the frame (we'll get to the bottom half in a moment).
The list on the left shows all the recipe files you have in the xml directory; use
the Add button to move recipes to the right-hand list and the Remove button to remove them
again. The Add All and Remove All buttons add all the available recipes or remove all the selected
ones, respectively. The right-hand list, as you may have guessed, shows the recipes you are going
to import.
When the right-hand list shows the list of recipes you want to import, click the Go button. You'll watch an animation as LargoRecipes imports each file. When the import is finished, you'll see something like this:
Some of the recipe names have turned to blue or red. Blue indicates a successfully imported file; red indicates an error. Click on some of the blue or red files; observe that the status and any errors that occurred during the import appear below the selection lists. You can use these errors to correct problems in the files or in LargoRecipes, such as misspelled or missing ingredients, and then click Go again to re-import.
Exporting recipes
Exporting recipes from LargoRecipes is just as easy as importing. As you might expect, "exporting" means making a RecipeML file from a LargoRecipes recipe. (I haven't implemented a MealMaster export yet because I don't think anyone wants it. If you do, please let me know - if enough people demand it, I may add the feature to a future release.)
To export,
get a recipe in the Recipe frame - by typing it in or by using the Fetch frame. (See
sections 1 and 2 of the tour if you forget
how to do this.) Then click the export button 
. You see the
export frame:
This frame looks and works just like the top half of the import frame; you can pick any
destination you like for the file you are going to export. LargoRecipes suggests
a name for your file - you can see in the screenshot that I'm exporting the same recipe we
imported above - but you can change this to any name you like. (If you do change the name,
make sure it ends in .xml - otherwise, most programs, including LargoRecipes,
won't recognise that the file is in XML format.)
Click the Export button and a moment later LargoRecipes is done creating the file! Go look
in the LargoRecipes xml folder to see the resulting file. You can send this file
to friends, who can import it into their recipe programs that use RecipeML.
Converting from MealMaster to RecipeML
Converting many MealMaster files into RecipeML is easy with LargoRecipes. I use this feature to create RecipeML databases from the many MealMaster files available on the Internet.
First, put any MealMaster files that you want to convert into the mealmaster
directory in the LargoRecipes installation folder. Open the Convert frame by picking Interface
from the main menu, then choosing Convert. You see this:
Just as you did in the Bulk Import frame, use the
Add, Remove, Add All, and Remove All buttons to build up a list of files to convert. Then
click the Go button to convert them - you'll watch an animation, and when it's complete, your
newly converted files will be in the xml directory in the LargoRecipes installation
folder.
Making a recipe web page
Another way to share recipes is to publish a web page containing your recipes. With the
web page frame, LargoRecipes makes it very easy to create a web page that contains the
recipes you want to share.
Open the web page frame by clicking Interface and choosing WebPage. You see this:
Select recipes from the list on the left and click Add to put them on your web page. Or click Add All to add all your recipes. If you change your mind, click Remove or Remove All to remove some or all of the selected recipes. Also, LargoRecipes suggests a title for your web page, but you can change this to anything you like.
Your recipe web pages normally include a link to the RecipeML from which they were generated. You can remove these links by un-ticking the "Include XML download" box. You might want to do this, for instance, if storage space for your site is scarce.
When you're happy with your title and selected recipes, click Go. You watch an
animation and then LargoRecipes opens your new web page. (If you already exported
some of your recipes, or created a web page from them, LargoRecipes may ask you if
you want to overwrite .xml or .html files.) The first page
you see contains the title, an index, and a list of your recipes. Click letters in the
index to jump to recipes starting with that letter. Click the names of your recipes to
see the recipes.
You can now use the web page as you like. The files making up the page are normally
in the html and xml folders in the LargoRecipes installation
folder. (If you chose to skip the XML download links, you don't need the xml
folder.) You can edit the files
using a text editor or GUI editor like FrontPage, then publish them on the web. (If you
don't know how to publish a web page, ask your internet service provider, or check out
one of the free services like Tripod.)
For your convenience, I provide a sample web page created with LargoRecipes. I haven't edited this web page at all, so you can see exactly what LargoRecipes produces for you.
If you already have recipe files in your html folder, LargoRecipes includes
them in your web page. So if you want to create a web page for just some of your recipes,
you should remove any existing files in the html folder so they don't show
up in your new web page.
If you want the HTML and XML files to go to a different place - for instance, if you
want to update a remote webserver via a symbolic link - you can change the
output directory in the preferences frame.
Last updated 4 November 2002
LargoRecipes source code, program, and web site copyright 2001-4 D.
Squirrel
This product is RecipeML compatible.