Posted by Matthew Starobin on November 16, 1998 at 13:04:53:
In Reply to: Transferring data between recipe management applications. posted by Steve Driessens on October 28, 1998 at 22:12:37:
I think the biggest problem with importing/exporting recipes is that recipes are not a fixed size or format.
Importing a name and address file is easier, because there are a fixed number of fields. But a recipe can be any number of ingredients, and some of these ingredients can be other recipes! Also, the unit abbreviations are an issue. We've exported recipes to other systems, and had to create translation tables so the "T" (for tablespoon) is translated to "table", because that's what the other system understands.
Recipes are also recursive, i.e., they refer to other recipes (which can in turn refer to other recipes, on and on). We allow for an unlimited number of linked recipes. Can the receiving software distinguish one from another? Does it need to receive the "lowest" recipes first, so it can then process the top most recipes properly?
These are some of the issues we've enountered. We've had lots of our users ask us if we can import recipes from the consumer programs on the web, and we haven't