Mangia! frequently makes use of Recipe Links. As an example, say one recipe uses another recipe as an ingredient. Now, instead of laboriously typing all of the second recipe’s ingredients into the first recipe’s Ingredient List, you can put the latter into the Ingredient List of the former by simply adding a Recipe Link to the included recipe into the list. It’s a simple two-step process:
• Find a place where the second, included recipe is listed (perhaps in its recipe file). Select it, then select Edit: Copy.
• Go back to the first recipe’s Ingredient List, put the cursor into the Ingredient box, then say Edit:Paste. It will appear in the Ingredient box, ready for you to Add to List, perhaps after adding an Amount or some Remarks.
As you know from using the Macintosh, to move something from one place to another usually means to make a copy of it. That's what it usually means here, too: once you move a recipe onto the Recipe Clipboard, you can scale it or alter its instructions without affecting the original, which is still safe back in its recipe file. Similarly, when you shorten your Shopping List by eliminating ingredients which you already have or choose not to use, the recipe that brought you those ingredients remains intact.
Sometimes, however, you don't want to make a full-blown copy of a recipe. For example, when Mangia! puts recipes into the Recipe Browser, they’re not “in the Browser” in any real sense: what you see listed are just references, or links, back to the recipes which are still stored safely in their respective files. If you think about it, this is what you want. If you want to open up a recipe that you see in the Browser and make permanent changes to it you don’t want those changes to disappear when you close the window; you'd like the changes to show up in the original recipe in its file.
The point of all this is that sometimes what you see listed in a window of Mangia! is not a recipe, or a copy of a recipe, but rather a marker, or Recipe Link, that just refers to a recipe that is actually stored somewhere else.
How do you tell a link from an actual recipe? In the recipe list of a Recipe File Window, it’s easy: a recipe link title is listed with a preceding asterisk (*). Any recipe that is listed without an asterisk is actually stored in the file. Other places recipes are listed, there are no “real” recipes, only links. Rather than clutter up the lists with an asterisk next to all the titles, none have them. But they’re links nonetheless. Here are the places in Mangia! that really contain nothing but recipe links:
• any recipe that is listed as part of a meal in a recipe file,
• any recipe listed in the the Recipe Browser,
• any recipe in a Compatible Recipes list,
• any recipe that is included in the Ingredient List of another.
You can treat a link exactly the way you treat a recipe, copying it to the Recipe Clipboard, adding its ingredients to the Shopping List, editing it, printing it, and so on. So why is it important to know the difference? Four reasons:
First, you can open, modify and save any recipe in a list, whether it’s a link or a “real” recipe. But any change to a link (or the original recipe) will show up in the original recipe or any of the other links.
Second, when you Copy and Paste a recipe from one list to another, it’s not clear to Mangia! whether you want to make a link to the recipe or make a whole-hog copy. Therefore, Mangia! will ask you which you intend and it behooves you to know the difference.
The third reason for understanding the difference between a link and a real recipe has to do with the Recipe File Window. In the Recipe List there, you may have a recipe that appears in several places, all but one a link marked with the asterisk. If you select and delete one of the marked titles, all you’re doing is removing a recipe link. However, if you try to delete the unmarked one, you’ll be deleting the recipe itself and Mangia! will ask you to confirm that this is what you really want to do. It’s potentially a serious step because removing an original recipe means that all links to that recipe will no longer mean anything.
Fourth, you should realize that Mangia! searches for recipes, not links. For example, you might have a recipe file that has nothing but links to recipes in other files. If you tell the Recipe Browser to look in that file for recipes it won’t find any at all; only original recipes count.
The bottom line is that recipe links save time and your valuable hard disk space and are normally not an issue, but you occasionally need to be aware of their nature when necessary.
