Colossal Cookbook/ColossalCookbook.cdr/mm/mealms15/mmm.txt

Text File | 1990-10-09 | 51.5 KB | 1,202 lines

Master Meal Manager

Are you tired of sitting down and agonizing over what meals to plan for
the next two weeks? Do you dread having to write down a shopping list
for what you think you'd like to have, hoping you remembered
everything needed? Have you wanted to nicely print out recipes of your
favorite recipe for friends who are impressed with your culinary
mastery?

Congratulations! You have just obtained the solution to these and many
other kitchen problems since you now have the best piece of software
available as Shareware for assisting you in planning and managing your
meals. Master Meal Manager will store all your recipes for you, schedule
meals automatically  and  create  a shopping list for you for the
ingredients in all the meals on your schedule.

This program was written by a frustrated husband who would be
assigned the task of deciding what the family was to eat every two
weeks. That's me! I got so tired of trying to think of what it was we all
liked, trying to remember what we ate the previous week or so, and then
trying to find something different to eat each day. If it were just me, I
wouldn't mind having the same thing each week. But the rest of the
family likes to have somewhat of a variety so I turned to my trusty bit
box for some help.

The result is Master Meal Manager. We have found it to be extremely
helpful. Now my wife sits at the computer for a half hour or so and
produces a nicely printed schedule of our next 2 weeks of meals and a
convenient shopping list with all the necessary ingredients on it. By
getting in the habit of putting the schedule up on the refrigerator we are
now able to keep pretty good tabs on the list and our meal plans.

In keeping with the traditions of Shareware, please feel free to pass this
program on to all of your friends with PCs. I do ask that you distribute
this program and related files unmodified.

Features
Master Meal Manager was designed to be fast and easy to use. With it
you can manage your recipes, automatically create meal schedules, and
produce shopping lists. Master Meal Manager has the following features:


Recipe File Manager
■  A recipe file which will contain up to 500 recipes. Each recipe can
   have the following information:

   ■ A name up to 20 characters long.

   ■ The types of meals it is used in. (Breakfast, Lunch, Supper)

   ■ The types of dishes it can be. (Beverage, Main, Side, Dessert)

   ■ A 30 character category field used to organize the recipes.

   ■ The number of servings the recipe makes.

   ■ Up to 12 ingredients each defined by the quantity, measurement,
     and name.

   ■ Up to 9 lines of text for instructions, each line being 70 characters
     long.

■  Recipes are laid out on the screen just as they would be on a recipe
   card.

■  Recipes can be added, deleted, edited, and printed.

Automatic Meal Scheduler
■  An automatic meal scheduling capability which plans what recipes to
   have each day for up to 14 days. The schedule contains the day of the
   week and the date for each day in the  schedule. Each day is broken
   up into 3 meals (breakfast, lunch, and supper) with each meal
   containing up to 2 beverages, 2 main dishes, 5 side dishes, and 2
   desserts.

■  The capability to edit and print the meal schedule once it is created.

■  The capability of showing each day's schedule on the screen.  All
   meals and dishes are shown on the screen as they are created and
   edited.

Shopping List Manager
■  Automatic creation of a shopping list from the meal schedule. The
   shopping list maybe edited on screen and printed out.


Program Control
■  Program, Screen Color, and Printer configuration control.
   The program can be told to look anywhere on your system for the
   files it uses. It can also be told how many servings are needed for
   each meal and dish. The number of dishes for each meal can also be
   changed for personal tastes. The program can be told how to control
   your printer to print the recipes, meal schedule and shopping list.




Getting Started
In this chapter I will show you how to get Master Meal Manager going
most efficiently. There really is nothing complicated about getting Master
Meal Manager running, but there are some things that should be made
clear.

What You Need

In order to run properly, Master Meal Manager needs...

   ■ an IBM PC, XT, AT or any close compatible with at least one 5.25"
     360K floppy drive.

   ■ at least 512K of available memory.

   ■ MS-DOS or PC-DOS version 2.0 or greater.

   ■ 80 column by 25 line monitor (Monochrome or Color).

   ■ an optional printer capable of printing 10 and 17 Characters Per
     Inch (CPI); 6 and 8 Lines Per Inch (LPI).

   ■ The Master Meal Manager Distribution Disk


Making Working Copies
I would highly recommend making a working copy of the Master Meal
Manager disk and then put the original away in a safe place BEFORE
actually beginning to use Master Meal Manager. Master Meal Manager
will not work properly in the form received from the distributor.

Single Floppy Drive
When you make your working disk, follow these steps:


   1 Format a floppy with DOS on it by typing:
        FORMAT A: /S ■

   2 Create a file on it with the name AUTOEXEC.BAT by typing:
        A: ■
        COPY CON: AUTOEXEC.BAT ■
        ECHO OFF ■
        CLS ■
        MMM ■

   3 Now press the F6 key and RETURN to finish entering the
     commands.

   4 Copy MMM.EXE and RECIPE.DAT from your original Master Meal
     Manager disk to the working disk you just made.
        COPY A:MMM.EXE B: ■
        COPY A:RECIPE.DAT B: ■

You now have a bootable disk which will automatically come up with
Master Meal Manager running. Using Master Meal Manager this way,
the number of recipes you can have in your recipe file will be limited to
about 200. This is due to the program and other files on the disk taking
up much of the space on the disk.

Dual Floppy Drives
If you have two floppy disk drives you can have a larger recipe file
(about 300 recipes) if you put the data files on a separate floppy disk. To
do this do the following:

   1    Format one floppy with DOS on it mark it "Master Meal
        Manager WORKING DISK".
          FORMAT A:/S ■

   2    Format another floppy without DOS on it and mark it "Master
        Meal Manager DATA DISK".
          FORMAT A: ■

   3    Put the floppy marked "WORKING DISK" in the A: drive.
   4    Create the AUTOEXEC.BAT file on the floppy with DOS on it
        as described above in step 2 for the single floppy instructions.

   5    Put the distribution disk in the B: drive and copy MMM.EXE from
        it to the "WORKING DISK".
          COPY B:MMM.EXE A: ■


   6    Put the floppy marked "DATA DISK" in the A: drive.

   7    Copy RECIPE.DAT from the distribution disk still in drive B: to
        this disk.
          COPY B:RECIPE.DAT A: ■

   8    Put the floppy marked "WORKING DISK" back in the A: drive.

   9    Put the floppy marked "DATA DISK" in the B: drive.

   10     Make the A drive the default drive by typing:
          A: ■

   11     Start up Master Meal Manager by typing:
          MMM ■

   12     Change the default data drive in Master Meal Manager by
          selecting the CONFIG option and then the PROGRAM
          option. Then enter "B:\" in the "DATA PATH" field. For
          details on how to do this, see the chapter on
          CONFIGURATION MANAGER.

Hard Disk Drive
For use with on a hard disk, you should begin by setting up a
subdirectory to contain the Master Meal Manager files. You can name
this subdirectory anything you wish. Once that is done just copy all the
files over to the subdirectory from the floppy. Master Meal Manager is
started by typing MMM or putting that command into a batch file. For
example...

Create the subdirectory and copy the files by typing the following:
   C: ■

   MD MMM ■   (MMM is the name of the subdirectory and could be
             anything)

   CD MMM ■

   COPY A:*.* ■






Quick Look

Lets take a quick look at the options available in Master Meal Manager.
We'll walk you through them briefly and talk about what they can do.

Once you start Master Meal Manager you are presented with the hello
screen.

For a short period of time the program will be busy reading the data it
needs. When it is finished, you will see a prompt on the screen telling
you to press RETURN to begin. At that point press RETURN to get to
the main menu.

Main Menu
Starting from the main menu screen, you can select the various options
by moving the highlighted cursor over the option you wish to use by
using the left and right arrow keys.

Notice as you move the cursor around, the information window at the
bottom of the screen changes to describe the currently highlighted main
menu option. When the cursor is positioned over the one you want,
press RETURN.

Each of the options available (except for QUIT) has a sub-menu that
appears in a pop-up window underneath the name of the option. The
option desired is selected then by moving the highlighted cursor over the
it with the up and down arrow keys. As with the main menu, press
RETURN when you are on the option you wish.

The main menu shows up along the top of the screen showing each of
the available options. The text in the lower part of the screen gives a
brief description of what the currently highlighted option does and
describes each of the sub-menu options available within that option. Recipe Manager
The RECIPES menu option brings up the RECIPE MANAGER. The
Recipe Manager helps you manage your recipe file. The recipe file is
organized somewhat like it would be in a file card box. The recipe file
can contain up to 500 recipes and is sorted alphabetically by CATEGORY
and RECIPE NAME for easy access.


There are 3 options available within the Recipe Manager.

VIEW
The VIEW option allows you to take care of the actual contents of the
recipe file. It will allow you to add, delete, edit or just look at any of the
recipes in the file.


PURGE
Then there is the PURGE option. This option is used to permanently
remove any of the recipes you may have marked "DELETED" using the
VIEW option. This option actually removes those recipes marked RECIPE
DELETED in order to get rid of "dead weight" in the file.

PRINT
The third option available in the Recipe Manager is the PRINT option.
This is the option that allows you to print the recipes and the recipe
index (the alphabetical list of all recipes in the recipe file).

PRINT has a number of available options for printing recipes. You can
print a single recipe (up to 99 copies), all the recipes of a particular type,
all or selected recipes from the Meal Schedule, and ALL the recipes in
the file.

Each recipe is printed in a recipe card-like format. By changing your
printer configuration setup (I'll talk about that a little later) you can
control the size of the recipe printout. The default size will fit on a 4X6
index card and if your printer can handle the IBM box character set, it
will be nicely framed in boxes for a very professional looking card you
can put in your card box. What I do is cut them out and paste them on
4X6 cards to have for use in the kitchen.

Each recipe is also printed with the current date at the bottom of the
recipe card along with a comment line you can enter as you begin the
printing process. This is nice if you wish to give a recipe to someone
else. You can put your name or some other comment on the bottom of
the card like "Courtesy of ..." or "Fresh from ..." or whatever other clever
stuff you may come up with.

Finally, the recipe index may be printed out, which is handy to have to
see at a glance what recipes you have in your file. This option assumes
that your printer can print 8 lines per inch in order to get more items on
the page.

Schedule Manager
The Schedule Manager is the heart of Master Meal Manager. With it you
can create, edit, and print up to 14 days worth of meal schedules. A meal
schedule consists of the day, date, and all the recipes to be used for each
meal. For each meal (breakfast, lunch, and supper) there are four
possible dish types which can have recipes scheduled. These are
beverages, main, side, and desserts. You can schedule up to 2 beverages,
2 main dishes, 5 side dishes, and 2 desserts for each meal.

There are 3 options within the Schedule Manager.

CREATE
CREATE will generate the meal schedule for up to 14 days starting with
the date you select. This is done automatically for each of the dish types
in each of the meals. Recipes are selected from the recipe file depending
on the dish and meal types of each recipe. These recipes are matched
randomly with each of the types to be filled in the schedule.

EDIT
EDIT allows you to change any of the recipe selections and serving sizes
generated using the CREATE option.

PRINT
PRINT allows you to print the schedule to your printer.
Shopping List Manager
The Shopping List Manager allows you to generate a shopping list from
the Meal Schedule to insure you have all the ingredients necessary to
make all the recipes that are scheduled.

There are 3 options available in the Shopping List Manager.

CREATE
CREATE uses the meal schedule to generate a shopping list. Each
ingredient in each recipe scheduled is added to the list. Obviously some
ingredients will be used more than once. Ingredients with the same name
and measurement units (oz, cup, etc.) will have their quantities combined
and will show up only once in the shopping list. If similar ingredients
have different measurement units they will show up separately on the
list. When the list is completed it is sorted alphabetically by name.

EDIT
As you would expect, EDIT allows you to edit the shopping list to your
liking. With EDIT you can further combine similar ingredients as you
wish, delete or add some. You can have up to 1000 items in the shopping
list.

PRINT
PRINT sends the shopping list to the printer. This option assumes that
your printer can print 8 lines per inch in order to get more items on the
page. Configuration Manager
The Configuration Manager allows you to set up Master Meal Manager
to know certain things about how you wish it to run.

There are 3 options available in the Configuration Manager.

PROGRAM
The PROGRAM option allows you to set up the following items: Data
path; Number of Days for Automatic Schedule Planning;  Number of
Recipes To Print Per Page; Default Servings; and Default Dishes.

COLOR
The COLOR option allows you to change the colors of the screen to your
liking.

PRINTER
The PRINTER option lets you set up the control codes for your particular
printer so that Master Meal Manager is able to correctly print the recipes,
schedules, and shopping lists. The various control codes are entered as
decimal values of the codes to be sent to the printer to turn on and turn
off each of the special print commands. You are also able to tell Master
Meal Manager whether or not your printer can print the IBM box
character set. If it can, the various printout will look better because of the
nice boxes around the information printed.




Recipe Manager

The Recipe Manager provides you with a menu of 3 options (VIEW,
PURGE, PRINT). Select the one you want with the up and down arrow
keys.

View
Selecting the VIEW option brings up the recipe screen which is in the
form of a typical recipe card.

Selecting Recipes
Each recipe is displayed fully on the screen. From here you can edit,
delete, or undelete any recipe in the file. There are four methods
available to get to the recipe you desire:

   ▀ Up and Down Arrow keys ()
     Use the up and down arrow keys to scan through the recipe file to
     review each recipe.

   ▀ PGUP and PGDN keys
     The PGUP key will immediately display the first recipe in the file.
     The PGDN key will display the last recipe in the file. From there
     you may use any of the other methods to get to the recipe desired.

   ▀ F2 Recipe Index List
     The F2 key brings up a window displaying a scrollable list of all
     the recipes. You can then use the keys described above (Up/Dn
     Arrow, PGUP/PGDN) to highlight the name of the recipe you
     desire. Pressing RETURN will select the currently highlighted
     recipe..

   ▀ Direct Entry of Recipe Name
     Finally, you may directly type in a recipe name that you wish to
     view. To do this, first press the INSert key to clear the name field.
     Then enter the recipe name (upper or lower case). Master Meal
     Manager will search for that name in the recipe file and if it is
     there it will be displayed.

     If it is not found, a window will pop up in the middle of the
     screen telling you that Master Meal Manager cannot find your
     recipe and will ask if you wish to search for another recipe or enter
     a new one with the name you just entered. If you wish to begin
     entering a recipe with that name, just press enter because Master
     Meal Manager assumes you will wish to do that. If you wish to
     search for another, press S and then RETURN to continue scanning
     the recipe file.



Enter/Edit/Delete

Once you find the recipe you want, you can make changes to it by
pressing the RETURN key. When you do that, a window pops up and
asks you if you wish to either Edit or mark the recipe for Deletion. You
will notice an "E" at the end of the question indicating that the default
selection is to Edit the recipe. All you have to do is press RETURN
again. If you do not wish to edit it but instead wish to mark the recipe
for deletion, then just press "D" and then RETURN. The "D" may be
entered in either upper or lower case. The recipe will be marked as
deleted and a message will show up in the instruction area of the recipe
indicating it is deleted. If you do not wish to either edit or delete the
recipe, you may just press the ESCape key to go back to selecting a
recipe.


Undelete/Edit
A recipe that is already marked for deletion will have a message appear
in the instructions area saying it is deleted. If you press RETURN at this
recipe, you will get a pop up window with a question asking if you wish
to Undelete the recipe or undelete the recipe and then Edit it. The
default answer is "U" in which case the recipe will be unmarked for
deletion and then go back to letting you select and view recipes. If you
enter "E" the recipe will be unmarked for deletion and then editing will
begin as described above. Recipes unmarked for deletion will not be
removed during a PURGE.

The difference between entering and editing recipes is that entering starts
out with a blank recipe and editing starts out with a recipe with
information in it. The process after that is the same.


Editing a Recipe
You may move around between the various fields of the recipe by using
the up and down arrow keys and the PGUP and PGDN keys. Let's take
a look at the different fields in the recipe.


Name
The Name field is the area in the upper left hand corner of the recipe
screen. This is the name that will be used throughout Master Meal
Manager in referring to this recipe. This field has room for 20 characters.


Category
The Category field is a 30 character field which can be used to categorize
your recipes into meaningful groupings. The category field is used along
with the recipe name to sort the recipes.

Servings
The Servings field tells Master Meal Manager how many servings this
recipe is good for. It is used by the Schedule Manager and the Shopping
List Manager. You must enter some number here. Master Meal Manager
won't let you leave it blank and it won't let you enter anything but
numbers here for obvious reasons.

Meal Type
MEAL TYPE tells Master Meal Manager what type of meal or meals it
may use this recipe in. This is used primarily with the Schedule
Manager. If you have a recipe with "LS" in this field, you are telling
Master Meal Manager that this recipe can be used in either Lunch or
Supper meals. You can put any, all, or no meal type codes in this field.
The valid meal types are B (BREAKFAST), L (LUNCH), S (SUPPER), and
A (ALL).


Dish Type
The other field used in meal scheduling is DISH TYPE. This tells Master
Meal Manager which type of dish this is. If you have an "S" in this field,
this tells Master Meal Manager that it is to be used only as a side dish.
And when used with the MEAL TYPE field example shown above, this
recipe would be used just as a side dish for either lunch or supper.
Again, you can have any, all, or no codes in this field. Like the MEAL
TYPE, if you leave this empty, this recipe will not be scheduled
automatically by the Schedule Manager.

Ingredients
The next section to be edited is the ingredients. There are 12 places for
ingredients. You may enter ingredients in any, all, or none of the 12
places.

Each ingredient has 3 parts.

   Quantity
   The Quantity may be a whole number such as "13", or a fraction such
   as "1/4", or a combination of the two such as "13 1/4". If you enter a
   fraction such as "10/4", it will be reduced to the proper representation
   of "2 1/2" automatically. A couple things to keep in mind when
   entering fractions is that the fraction part must be separated from the
   whole number part by a space. The fraction part must be entered with
   a number, a "/" (slash) and another number. NO DECIMAL
   NUMBERS ARE ALLOWED. Master Meal Manager will not accept a
   decimal point (.). All numbers are rounded to these fractions: 1/16,
   1/10, 1/8, 1/6, 3/16, 1/5, 1/4, 3/10, 5/16, 1/3, 3/8, 2/5, 7/16, 1/2,
   9/16, 3/5, 5/8, 2/3, 11/16, 7/10, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 13/16, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10,
   15/16.

   Measurement
   The Measurement is a text field in which you indicate the
   measurement of the ingredient such as "CUP", "OZ", or "TSP". You
   decide what the names of the measurements are.

   Item Name
   The Item is the description of the ingredient. As with the
   measurement, consistency in the names used for ingredients will help
   greatly. Try not to use "ONION" in one recipe and "ONIONS" in
   another. They will show up as separate items in the shopping list.


Instructions
For the Instruction section, you may enter up to 9 lines with 70
characters per line. Editing these lines is just like editing all the other
fields. You may move up and down among the instruction lines with the
up and down arrow keys and move along the line with the left and right
arrow keys.

Filing The Recipe
Once you are done editing the recipe, press the ESCape key. You will be
asked if the recipe is the way you want it. If it is, you can just press
RETURN and the changes you made will be stored in the file. Or you
can press "N" and RETURN to go back in and make more changes to the
recipe. Finally you can press ESCape and ignore any of the changes you
just made. Master Meal Manager will go back to the VIEW mode.

Once you are finished with the VIEW mode, just press ESCape and you
will be back at the main menu.
Purge
Selecting the Purge option will permanently delete the recipes currently
marked for deletion from the recipe file.

Once you have selected this option, a window pops up on the screen
warning you of the need to make a backup of your recipe file before you
proceed with the Purge. You have the option of backing out of this
without any changes by pressing the ESCape key or just pressing
RETURN. Notice the default response to the question is "NO".

To continue you must press the INSert key and then enter "YES". Once
you do, the screen shows you its progress in the purge process.



Print
The PRINT option in the Recipe Manager allows you to do all the
printing associated with the recipe file. There are a number of options
within Print which will allow you to print out the recipes and the index
in a number of ways which can be helpful to you. The available options
show up in a pop up menu window when you select PRINT.

These options are selected the same way the rest have been, by using the
Up and Down arrow keys to move the cursor to the desired choice and
then pressing RETURN.


Print Single Recipes
This option allows you to select a single recipe from the file and print it
out in a typical recipe format on your printer. This option has several
unique features.

Comments
The first thing that happens when you select this option is you will be
given the opportunity to enter a comment line which will be printed on
the bottom of each of the copies to be printed. This is nice if you are
giving the recipe to a friend and you want to put a note or your name
on the recipe. You can put things like "From the kitchen of ..." or
"Courtesy of ..." or whatever. You have up to 40 characters to use for
this. When the recipe is printed, the current date is printed on the same
line with the comments.

Selecting A Recipe
Selecting a recipe here is identical to selecting one in the VIEW option.
The recipes are displayed on the screen and you select the desired recipe
by using the same four methods. When you find the recipe you want,
select it by pressing RETURN.

Once the recipe is selected you are asked to verify if this is the recipe
you wish to print. Your choices at this point are to press RETURN if it
is, Press "N" if it is not, or press ESCape to completely bail out of the
RECIPE option and go back to the main menu.

Number Of Copies
If you elect to print this recipe, you are asked how many copies of this
recipe you wish to have printed. This is handy if you want to do things
like having a bunch of copies of your favorite casserole recipe available
to hand out at the church pot luck. The default is one.

Number Of Servings
The last question you are asked is the number of servings your recipe
should be printed out for. Master Meal Manager will then automatically
adjust all the ingredient quantities to make the number of servings
indicated. This is an extremely useful feature if you are wanting to scale
a recipe up or down to serve more or less than is shown on the recipe
in the file. The default is the original number in the recipe and if you do
not wish to change it just press RETURN. If you do want to change it
just press the INSert key and enter the number of desired servings.

Printing begins at this point. If you have requested more than one copy
of the recipe be printed, Master Meal Manager will print on each page
the number of copies indicated in the CONFIG PROGRAM.

When the recipe is printing, a little pop up window shows on the screen
and indicates the recipe is being printed. If you wish to stop the printing
process, just press ESCape and in a moment or two the printing will stop
and the program will return to the print option menu. When printing is
done, the program will return to the screen showing the recipe just
printed. From here you may move to another recipe to print or just press
ESCape and go back to the main menu.


Print Recipes By Type
This option allows you to print out a number of recipes from the file
based on the meal type and dish type you specify.

Comments
When you select this option you are allowed to enter comments as in the
SINGLE RECIPE option.

Multiplication Factor
Then you are asked to enter the "multiplication factor" for the recipes to
print. This multiplication factor can be used to scale up or down the
recipes to be printed. This is similar to entering the number of servings
in the SINGLE RECIPE option except that the number you enter here
will be used to directly multiply the servings by and ingredient
quantities by. This factor can be any whole number you want from 1 to
100. Even though you may be able to enter numbers as high as 999,
Master Meal Manager internally limits the number to 100.

Meal Type
Once you do this you are requested to enter the meal type you wish to
print. The question helps you with the answer by providing the valid
answers you can use. These answers are B, L, S, and A. The B stands for
BREAKFAST, L stands for LUNCH, S stands for SUPPER, and A stands
for ALL. Select the one you want.

Dish Type
You then enter the dish type you wish printed. The possible choices are
B for BEVERAGE, M for MAIN, S for SIDE, D for DESSERT, and A for
ALL. Once you select the meal type and the dish type, printing will
begin. All recipes with the meal type and the dish type selected will be
printed. Each of the recipes selected for printing will be displayed on the
screen. After printing all the recipes found with the selected meal and
dish types, the program will return to the RECIPE PRINT option.

Print Scheduled Recipes
This option allows you to print selected recipes from the meal schedule.
If you do not have a schedule created, Master Meal Manager will tell
you that there isn't any to use and you must go back to the main menu
and using the SCHEDULE CREATE option to create a new schedule
before using this option.

Start Date
The first thing you need to do is to select the first date from the schedule
to select recipes from. This is done with the Up and Down arrow keys.
When you see the desired starting date, press RETURN.
Stop Date
Do the same thing for the ending date. Notice you can't select an ending
date earlier than the starting date. Simply use the Up and Down arrow
keys to pick the desired stop date. This date is included in the selections.

Meal Type
Once you do this you are requested to enter the meal type you wish to
print. The question helps you with the answer by providing the valid
answers you can use. These answers are B, L, S, and A. The B stands for
BREAKFAST, L stands for LUNCH, S stands for SUPPER, and A stands
for ALL. Select the one you want.

Dish Type
You then enter the dish type you wish printed. The possible choices are
B for BEVERAGE, M for MAIN, S for SIDE, D for DESSERT, and A for
ALL. Once you select the meal type and the dish type, printing will
begin. All recipes in the schedule between the dates selected and with
the meal type and the dish type selected will be printed.

Once that is done, printing will begin. Master Meal Manager will print
all the recipes between the starting and ending dates which have the
meal and dish types selected. The comment printed at the bottom of each
recipe will tell what date in the schedule the recipe came from.

Print All Recipes
This option does just what it says. It will print all the recipes in the
recipe file.

Comments
When you select this option you are allowed to enter comments as in the
SINGLE RECIPE option.

Multiplication Factor
Then you are asked to enter the "multiplication factor" for the recipes to
print. This multiplication factor can be used to scale up or down the
recipes to be printed. This is similar to entering the number of servings
in the SINGLE RECIPE option except that the number you enter here
will be used to directly multiply the servings by and ingredient
quantities by. This factor can be any whole number you want from 1 to
100. Even though you may be able to enter numbers as high as 999,
Master Meal Manager internally limits the number to 100.

Once this information is entered, printing will begin.


Print Recipe Index
This option prints the entire recipe index. The recipe index is a listing of
the names of all the recipes in the recipe file. Along with the name of
each recipe, it prints the category, meal type, the dish type, and an X in
brackets if the recipe is marked for deletion. This is a good way to
determine at a glance which recipes are marked for deletion before
performing a PURGE. Every recipe with an X in the box will be
eliminated from the recipe file during a PURGE.

At the bottom of the page of the index printout is a legend showing
what all the meal and dish type codes mean. The printed recipe index
will be printed at 8 lines per inch.



Schedule Manager
Selecting the Schedule Manager provides you with a menu of 3 options
(CREATE, EDIT, PRINT) to work with the Meal Schedule. The Meal
Schedule is a day by day plan of what recipes you will have for each of
the dishes and meals for the number of days you have planned. A day
contains up to 3 meals (Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper). Each meal can
have 4 different types of dishes (Beverage, Main, Side, and Dessert). You
can have up to two beverages, 2 main dishes, 5 side dishes, and 2
desserts for each meal. All these numbers can be changed to your liking
by using the CONFIG PROGRAM option discussed later.

Create
Selecting the CREATE option allows you to have Master Meal Manager
automatically plan your meal schedule for you. It will plan the meals
and dishes you wish for up to 14 days.

It first checks to see if there is an existing schedule. If there is,
Master Meal Manager pops up a window with a warning that you will
overwrite this existing schedule if you continue with this option.
You can just press RETURN to continue on with the schedule or you can
press ESCape to exit and go back to the main menu.


Start Date
Then it pops up a window and asks you for the starting date of your
schedule. It will offer you today's date as a default. If that is to your
liking, just press RETURN.  If not, use the editing keys (left & right
arrow, backspace, delete, insert) to make the necessary changes. You
must enter the date in a certain way that Master Meal Manager will
understand. Just like the default date that shows up on the screen, it
must first begin with a 3 letter abbreviation of the month. The valid
abbreviations are: JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP,
OCT, NOV, and DEC. Next there must be a space followed by the day
of the month, then a comma (,), and then the year. So a typical date
would be FEB 2,1989 or DEC 25,1990.

Number of Days to Plan
When you have entered the starting date you tell Master Meal Manager
how many days to plan. It first presents you with the default number of
days. You may change this to anything from 1 to 14 if you don't like
what you see. The new number you enter will become the default for the
next time you CREATE a SCHEDULE.

You may also change this default number by using the CONFIG
PROGRAM option.


Scheduling
Once you enter the number of days to plan, Master Meal Manager begins
to automatically plan your meal schedule. It starts with the starting date
and begins planning the first meal that has more that 0 dishes in it
according to the CONFIG PROGRAM option.

For each dish of each meal, Master Meal Manager searches the recipe file
for a recipe that has the correct meal and dish types and puts the name
of that recipe in the schedule. If there are more than 1 of a particular
dish in a meal, Master Meal Manager checks for duplicates to make sure
a particular recipe doesn't show up more than once for that dish.

Once the schedule is finished Master Meal Manager stores it to disk and
returns to the main menu.


Edit
Undoubtedly you will have some differences of opinion in some of the
recipe combinations picked by Master Meal Manager. So in order to
allow you to make changes, Master Meal Manager provides the EDIT
option.

When you select this option, assuming you have already created a
schedule as described above, the first day's schedule appears on the
screen. If there is no schedule to edit, then you will get a message on the
screen telling you so.

Selecting The Day to Edit

Assuming there is a schedule to edit, these are the options you will have:


   ■ Use the down arrow key to view each of the following day's
     schedules and then the up arrow key to move back in the schedule.


   ■ Press ESCape to completely back out of the EDIT option and go
     back to the main menu.

   ■ Press RETURN when you see the day you wish to edit.


Making Changes

Master Meal Manager highlights the first recipe scheduled in the first
meal. From there you can either change the recipe selected, delete the
recipe and leave that dish blank, press RETURN to move to the
SERVings field, press the F1 function key to display that recipe on the
screen, or press ESCape to end your editing of that day's schedule.


Let's look at these options a little closer...

Changing Recipes

   Using the Arrow Keys
   First of all, you can change the recipe selected by either using the up
   and down arrow keys to scan through the list of names in the recipe
   file OF THE RECIPES THAT MATCH THE CURRENT MEAL AND
   DISH TYPE. I emphasize this so that you will not think something has
   gone bananas with your recipe file. If you are currently editing side
   dishes for lunch, only the recipes designated for lunch and side dish
   are shown there. This saves you the time of skipping over irrelevant
   recipes. This makes the task of making recipe changes much easier.

   Pressing The F2 Key
   The F2 key will bring up the recipe index on the screen, much like the
   Recipe Manager. Using the Up and Down Arrow keys, the PGUP, and
   PGDN keys you can position the highlighted cursor on the recipe of
   your choice. Press Return to select the highlighted recipe for use in
   the Schedule.

   Pressing The INS Key
   If for some reason you do not wish to have a recipe selected for that
   particular meal and dish, then you may get rid of the name by using
   the INSert key to clear the field. The field will remain blank and the
   Servings field will show 0.

Changing Servings
After making a change to the recipe name, the cursor moves to the
SERVings field. You may keep what is there by just pressing RETURN
or change the servings by editing the number. If you try to make the
field blank, the number of servings will become 0 since this is a numeric
field and must have some number in it. If you press the PGUP key, the
cursor will go to the previous recipe in the schedule.



Print
If you have already created a meal schedule, this option will print it out
on your printer.

If you select this option with no meal schedule created you will just get
a message on the screen telling you there is no schedule to print. Just
press RETURN to go back to the main menu.



Shopping List Manager
Selecting Shopping List Manager will provide you with three options to
help you with your shopping list as described below.

Create
The CREATE option automatically generates a shopping list for
you. It does this by taking the meal schedule and reading all the recipe
names on it. It then reads each of the recipes from the recipe file and
extracts the ingredients from them and creates a list. Each ingredient that
is already in the list with the same name and measurement is
accumulated together.

The Shopping List Manager first checks to see if there is an existing
shopping list. If there is, Master Meal Manager pops up a window with
a warning that you will overwrite the existing shopping list if you
continue with this option. You can just press RETURN to continue on
with the schedule or you can press ESCape to exit.


The Shopping List Manager begins to generate the shopping list and
displays its progress with a pop up window which shows the current
number of list items currently found as it searches the meal schedule.
The Shopping List Manager can handle up to 1000 shopping list items.
It is unlikely that this number of items will be generated since generally
there's is alot of duplication in the ingredients of most recipes.

Once the entire meal schedule is read and all the ingredients are put into
the shopping list, the list is sorted alphabetically by name. The progress
of this is also shown on the screen. Once the list is sorted Master Meal
Manager returns to the main menu.

Edit
The Edit option allows you to make changes to the shopping list. It
opens up a window showing the editing commands and then opens
another window to display the list. The list is displayed starting with the
first 20 items.


Selecting An Item
You may move around the list by using the up and down arrow keys
which will move you up or down one item. If you move the cursor to
the bottom or top of the list the list will scroll to reveal the next item.
You may also use the PGUP and PGDN keys to move up or down one
screen full at a time. The currently selected item is the one the little
arrow on to the left of the item description is pointing to.

Editing An Item
You can edit an item by pressing the RETURN key. When you do this
the item description is highlighted, indicating you may now edit that
ingredient. When the ingredient name is the way you like it, then press
RETURN. The Quantity will then be highlighted. Pressing RETURN will
complete the editing of the quantity and move to the Measurement.
When this is the way you want it press RETURN a last time to complete
the editing process. The cursor will be to the right of the measurement
on the line you just edited. From here you can once again move around
the list or do more editing.

Deleting An Item
You can delete an item by pressing the DELete key. The currently
selected item will be deleted from the list.

Inserting An Item
You can also insert new items where the cursor is by pressing the INSert
key. If you press the INSert key immediately after having deleted an
item, the last deleted item will be inserted at the cursor. If you press the
INSert key again, a blank line will be inserted at the cursor. A blank line
will then continue to be inserted each time you press the INSert key until
you again press the DELete key. A blank will also be inserted when you
press the INSert key if you have not previously deleted anything.

After a blank is inserted, it may be edited like any other item. This will
allow you to add new items to your shopping list that are not a part of
the meal schedule. This could include things like non-food items or
anything else you want to remember to get.


Saving The List
Once the shopping list is the way you like it, press the ESCape key. You
will be prompted indicate whether or not you wish to keep the changes
you have made to the list.

You may answer the question that appears regarding keeping changes
in one of three ways. First you may just press RETURN if it is OK and
you wish to keep the changes. If you want to go back and make some
more changes, press the "N" key and then RETURN to go back to
editing. Finally, you may get out without keeping any of the changes
you made by pressing the ESCape key again. You will then be back at
the main menu.

Re-Sorting The List
If you decide you wish to keep the changed list, you will be asked if you
want to have the list resorted. If you DO NOT, press RETURN. If you
do, enter 'Y' and then RETURN.



Print
Like with the Schedule Manager, selecting this option causes the
shopping list to be sent to the printer at 8 lines per inch.

You will get a message on the screen if there is no list created to print.
Just press Return to go back to the main menu.



Configuration Manager

The Configuration Manager allows you some control over how the
program works. There are three options available as described below.

Program
The PROGRAM option shows the current defaults used by the program
for some of the various things it does. Most of the items affect the
Schedule Manager in the way it CREATEs the meal schedule. Each of
these things are changeable as you step down through them.


Things You Can Change

Data Path
The first thing shown at the top of the screen is the current path for
Master Meal Manager's data files. This tells Master Meal Manager where
to look for all the various data files it uses such as the recipe file,
schedule, shopping list, printer codes, and screen colors. This is a line of
text in the form of an MS-DOS path string. For example, if you have
Master Meal Manager on a hard disk drive which happens to be drive
C, and you have its data files in a separate subdirectory labeled
MMMDATA, the string you would need to enter would be
"C:\MMMDATA\".  Master Meal Manager will always make sure there is
a backslash '\' on the end of the data path so that it will work properly
with MS-DOS. If you are using two floppy disks, the Master Meal
Manager disk is in the A: drive and the data disk is in the B: drive, you
would enter "B:\" here.


Number of Days to Schedule
The next thing on the screen is the number of days the Schedule
Manager will plan a schedule for. This number is the one which is the
default answer to the question presented when you start up the
SCHEDULE CREATE option. This may be anything from 1 to 14.

Number of Recipes to Print
Next is the number of recipes that will fit on your printer page. This may
have to be determined by experimentation. As a starting point for
determining this you can assume that if your printer will print at 8 lines
per inch, then you should be able to print 3 recipes per page. If it prints
at 6 lines per page, then only 2 recipes will fit.

Number of Servings
The next section of the screen is the section which allows you to tell the
Schedule Manager the number of servings to schedule for each dish of
each meal when it does its automatic scheduling. If you normally have
only 2 people eat breakfast but you have 6 people eat supper, then you
can tailor each meal and each dish to compute the proper number of
servings in order to accurately plan ingredients needed. You would set
all the breakfast dishes to 2 and the supper dishes to 6.

Number of Dishes
The final section allows you to tell Master Meal Manager how many
dishes for each meal to plan.  You can have up to 2 beverages, 2 main
dishes, 5 side dishes, and 2 dessert dishes. You may configure Master
Meal Manager for any number from 0 to the maximum number. For
example, you may not wish to have Master Meal Manager plan
beverages, so you can put a 0 in the beverages fields of each meal. Or
you may wish to have Master Meal Manager only plan supper main
dishes, so you would place 0's in all the fields except SUPPER MAIN
and there you would place either 1 or 2 depending on how many main
dishes you wanted to have scheduled.

Finishing Up
Each field is edited the same way everything else in Master Meal
Manager is. If you do not wish to change a particular field and just want
to move down the screen to others, just keep pressing RETURN to get
there. In this screen you may not move back up with the arrow keys
once you pass up an item. You do not have to press RETURN for every
item in order to finish up the editing. Instead you can just press ESCape
and answer the question presented at the bottom of the screen.



Colors

This option allows you to select the colors you wish to be displayed on
your screen. There are three categories of display colors to set up. The
first is called the SCREEN. This is the color of the background window
frames. Second is called DATA DISPLAY. This is the colors used to
display the information on the screen. Some of the windows use this
color combination also. The third is the DATA ENTRY. This defines the
colors used to display a selected piece of information which will be
edited or entered. Some of the windows use this color combination also.

Changing Colors
Editing these colors is very easy. Simply use the left and right arrows to
the category you wish to edit. As the screen prompt indicates, press the
Page Up key to change the color of the 'X' in the box, representing the
color of the text on the screen. Press the Page Down key to change the
background color. Once you have the colors the way you like them,
press the ESCape key to go back to the main menu. You will now see the
new screen colors.




Printer

This option tells Master Meal Manager what control codes to send to
your printer to make the printouts look right.

Each of the items on the screen describe some particular print
characteristic needed by the various print routines. As you can see, each
characteristic shown has a column for entering codes to turn it on and
to turn it off. These codes must be obtained from the manual that comes
with your printer. Some characteristics will not have a code sequence to
turn it off. Some characteristics will not even be supported by your
printer. In these cases those fields are left blank. You can edit any of
these codes by using the arrow keys to highlight the desired code and
then pressing Return.

Printer Codes
Codes are defined here by entering their decimal numbers separated by
a slash character "/". Master Meal Manager provides you with some
defaults which are designed to control an Epson MX-80 printer. You can
get the idea from these as to how to enter the codes you need. If you
look at the defaults presented, you will notice that the Epson has no
codes available to print double height characters. These are used for the
recipe names on recipe printouts. You could substituted any other type
of print style you wish here if you want to change that. The Epson
printer does not support triple width characters either, so I have set the
default to print double wide characters.

To aid you in determining how to set these codes up to make the
printouts look the way you want, see Appendix A for a listing of what
printouts use what characteristics and where.

IBM Box Character Set
A final question presented at the bottom of the screen asks you if your
printer can print the IBM box character set. This is the character set
which makes the various lines and corners used to make boxes on the
computer screen. Many printers will print these characters but some do
not. If yours does not, use the up arrow key to change the answer to NO
for this question. Instead of printing the box characters, Master Meal
Manager will use dashes (-) and bars (|) to outline the printouts.



Printer Code Usage

Described below are the various printouts produced by Meal Master and
what printer codes are used to produce those printouts. This will assist
you in configuring Meal Master to print the way you want it to using the
CONFIG PRINTER option.


Recipe Index
The printer is initialized to print at 8 Lines Per Inch (LPI). The header
"RECIPE INDEX" is printed with DOUBLE WIDTH characters. The rest
of the list is printed at 10 Characters Per Inch (CPI).


Recipe Cards
The recipe name is printed with DOUBLE WIDTH and
DOUBLEHEIGHT characters. The printer is then set to print at 15 CPI
and 8 LPI. After the recipe is completed, the comments and date are
printed using SUPERSCRIPT characters.


Meal Schedule
The printer is initialized to print at 17 CPI and 8 LPI. The words
BREAKFAST LUNCH SUPPER as well as the days and dates are printed
with DOUBLE WIDTH characters. These DOUBLE WIDTH characters are
at the 17 CPI size so they will be smaller than those printed at 10 CPI.
The remainder of the schedule is printed at 17 CPI.


Shopping List
Like the recipe index, the shopping list printed at 8 LPI and the header
text "SHOPPING LIST" is printed with DOUBLE WIDTH characters. The
remainder of the list is printed at 10 CPI.





Final Remarks

Well, I hope this little user's guide will help you
get the most out of Master Meal Manager. I
think Master Meal Manager will be a valuable
asset in planning your meals and shopping trips.
It has helped us keep better track of our diet
and our food budget by giving us a handle on
the what we eat.

I encourage you to write and tell me what you
think of Master Meal Manager and pass along
any ideas you may have to improve it. I also
want to hear about any problems you encounter
in using Master Meal Manager. The more
comments I hear, the better Master Meal
Manager will become. I will appreciate whatever
you have to say.



Thank you for using
     Master Meal Manager!

Thomas C. Johnson