XM-What?

July 27, 2006 4:14 PM

Recipe formatting and XML/XHTML - what am I getting myself into?

In my search for a good way to organize my recipes, I stumbled across this thread in which Jessamyn suggests the format used at eatdrinkfeelgood. I love the way these recipes look - clear, easy to read, and straightforward (example). I would like to use this system to categorize my own recipes.

The problem? I have absolutely no freaking clue where to start. Apparently it is a markup language that is an XML application. These words mean very little to me. I would consider myself computer savvy on a moderate level (I taught myself basic LaTeX), but I have zero experience with HTML or any programming (I had to lookup how to do the A HREF thing, just like I do every time I post a link).

So how do I jump into this? I really only want to learn what I need to to get my recipes into this format. Once I've done that, how will I view them? In a browser?

I'm on a Mac (Tiger), FWIW.

posted by rossination to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Well from the looks of the website, you basically format the recipe in the XML structure the program specifies, and then the application converts it to many formats.

The extremely tedious part is going to be converting the recipes to the XML sheet. The language itself isn't that hard, and is fairly easy to create.

This example shows how it would look for a sample recipe. It's kind of like LateX in a way in that you can "see" the recipe within the structure, all you have to do is follow the tags.
posted by unexpected at 4:37 PM on July 27, 2006

Try this XML tutorial.
posted by flabdablet at 5:01 PM on July 27, 2006

In my search for a good way to organize my recipes

Er, for what purpose?

Just for you? To read and cook from? To print out? To make into a website? To share with other people? To send to publishers in the hope of being rich and famous.

Unless you can tell us more about the intended end product or service, it's hard to say.

XML/XHTML may well be way over the top so let's not focus on that as it may be a dead end.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:17 PM on July 27, 2006

If you go look at their main page, you'll see a link to a web based tool to input your recipes.
posted by beerbajay at 5:21 PM on July 27, 2006

I gotta admit, I'm a bit confused as to what the eatdrinkfeelgood site is actually providing. Is it recipe data? Is it an XML schema? Is it a stylesheet?

Anyway, nothing about XML is all that hard, but it's somewhat harder than it needs to be due to lack of easy, robust tools that help you put the pieces together (XForms + XML + XSL + XHTML = What you probably want) on a Web application. I've never understood why this is the case, but really I'd say it's a bit much to learn if all you want to do is organize some recipes. I have no doubt you could learn it, it's just that it would be quite a time sink.

When you were done learning how to build this recipe database, you could probably go out and get a web development job.

If you're dead-set on it, the w3schools link that flabdablet posted is pretty much the best way to start. That's a highly regarded and much beloved site.

On the other hand, if the deep structure of your question is really "how do I organize my recipes in a Web application that I can control," a quick and dirty way to do it would be to install an instance of WordPress (a good, free blogging software system), and then use that to host your recipes. You could make different categories for types of recipes (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.) and then add tags for each ingredient, which would let you do quite precise searches. It would be 99% as good and 1% as difficult.

My $.02. Good luck!
posted by Hildago at 5:26 PM on July 27, 2006

From what I have read you create xml files that contain the recipe data. Then, you are able to turn that data into a readable recipe in a variety of formats. pdf for printing, xhtml, xhtml formatted for portables, etc.

You are also able to use parts of other recipe xml files in other recipes. So, you make your recipe for pie crust once, and include it with all of your pie recipes.
posted by utsutsu at 5:30 PM on July 27, 2006

Okay, you taught yourself some LaTeX, so you could learn this if you spent the time. But XML is really major overkill for just organizing some recipes. It's on par with saving your recipes on an Oracle database.

I recommend you just take the HTML from one of the nicely-formatted recipes and edit it by hand in a text editor. That's all you really need to do; you don't need the whole XML conversion step.
posted by Khalad at 7:27 PM on July 27, 2006

I'm sorry, I wasn't very clear. Basically, I want to make my recipes look like they do on the eatdrinkfeelgood site - I don't need anything in the way of storage, or publication, or web content whatsoever. These will probably be "printed" as pdfs and kept on my mac for Spotlighting.

So, my question was basically: what is the quickest, easiest way to reach the end that I'm aiming for? And, apparently, the best answer may just be to edit the HTML file.
posted by rossination at 8:00 PM on July 27, 2006

You might want to check out Macgourmet. It's far from the greatest program - there are pretty weird interface problems and the like, but once you get the hang of it, it's quite straight forward and does allow you to very simply export in HTML for display on the web or simply to make them easily searchable by Spotlight.
posted by mikel at 9:02 PM on July 27, 2006