Loadstar 128 #9/q09.d81/t.cook's boot

Text File | 1989-01-01 | 6.2 KB | 134 lines

                          C O O K ' S    H E L P E R

                               by Lee O. Clinton

     One of the main uses of a computer is keeping track of tidbits of
information.  The computer term for a program like this is "database".  You
may not know it, but you probably have a paper-based database in your
kitchen right now, in the form of a recipe box.  While it is probably pretty
handy for finding recipes, since thumbing through 8x5 cards is something our
hands do quite well, your box of cards won't help you much in making
calculations or writing up a shopping list.

     COOK'S HELPER is an 80-column recipe and menu database that will
astound you with its features, and take kitchen management into the 21st
Century.  Some of its features are:

- holds up to 125 recipes per recipe file

- sends output to disk, screen or printer

- prints recipes on single 5x8 cards, one recipe per standard page, or two
recipes per page

- allows you to search for recipes by type, title, preparation time or
ingredients

- permits up to 125 recipes per disk and 15 recipes per meal menu

- generates a shopping list

- allows you to customize the screen colors, cursor style, drive set-up,
printer configuration, etc.

- has pop-up utilities such as a metric-SAE converter, a full-screen
notepad, directory, and even a graphic printer set-up

- supports word-wrap in all of its input routines

    There are help screens all over the program.  At almost any time you can
press Commodore-H and the relevant help screen for that part of the program
will be displayed.  Since Lee has made the program so intuitive, and has
placed prompts and helpscreens everywhere, I will not even attempt to
describe everything here.

    Here's what you do to get started.  First, copy COOK'S HELPER onto an
empty, formatted disk.  It will create a 550-block RELative file so you need
the whole side of a disk free.  You create this file by choosing
INITIALIZATION from the first menu.  The first time you boot the program
you'll see a message that says that no configuration or recipe file has been
found.  Don't worry about this -- the next time it will find your files, if
you have saved them.

    The INITIALIZATION will take a couple of minutes.  It's a big file.  Now
you can go to the RECIPE MANAGER and enter in some recipes.  Since
file-copying COOK'S HELPER and creating the RELative file takes longer than
a whole disk copy (if you use one of the high speed copiers like SNAPSHOT,
WARPSPEED, MAVERICK, etc.) it's not a bad idea to make some copies of your
newly created COOK'S HELPER disk for future use...especially if you have a
LOT of recipes.

    You may want to configure the program first.  When you choose the
CONFIGURATION MANAGER option from the first menu, you can set a whole lot of
parameters that will be remembered the next time you use the program.  Some
things you can set are the screen and text colors, the printer ESCape codes
(so you can get graphic printouts if you want), your drive set-up, and even
the look of the cursor.  The default parameters set by Lee are all pretty
standard, so you don't NEED to do this.

    COOK'S HELPER supports two types of printout.  If you have set the
printer codes (in the CONFIGURATION MANAGER) for your printer, then you can
print out ANY screen in the program, including help screens.  On my STAR
NX-1000C I used Lee's default parameters and it printed the screen nicely,
sideways on the paper in large size letters.  It used 8 to turn on dot
graphics mode and 20 to turn it off.  Check your printer manual to see what
your codes should be, enter them into the printer screen of the
CONFIGURATION MANAGER, and save them.

     You may find that no matter what you do, you can't get the graphics
printout to work.  This is quite typical in the world of Commodore where
even the "standard" printers aren't.  Don't sweat this!  The things you will
want to print, the recipes, menus, shopping lists, etc., all print out in
normal text mode from their respective menus.  The only thing you will be
missing is the ability to dump the screen to printer whenever you want.

    There is a pop-up utility menu available anywhere in the program.  You
display it by pressing the Commodore key (which pops up the menu), then the
letter of the utility you want.  This menu looks like:

C - Conversion calculator
D - Disk directory
H - Help screens
N - Notepad (with wordwrap)
P - Print screen

NOTE: in this program, which is 100% in ML, the 'print to the screen'
display is very fast and may scroll up off the screen.  Keep your finger by
the NO SCROLL key when viewing anything to the screen.  Just tap it and the
display will wait for you to press the key again.

    The RECIPE MANAGER section is like a standard database.  Use the keys
listed at the bottom of the screen to move from field to field, entering in
your ingredients and recipe instructions.  The top eight or so rows of the
recipe screen are for ingredients.  Just move the cursor down the screen and
soon you'll find yourself in a colored rectangle.  Here is where you can
enter the directions for concocting that culinary masterpiece your
grandmother passed on to you.

    Everything is prompted.  Just keep your eyes at the bottom of the screen
for supported keypresses.

    After you've entered enough recipes for a well-balanced meal, you can go
to the MENU MANAGER section.  Here you choose recipes from a highlighted
list and put them together into a meal's plan.  From here you can print out
everything, including a detailed, totaled shopping list.  Forgetting to get
an important ingredient is a thing of the past.

    The SEARCH feature is especially handy.  If you are looking for a quick
meal, you can search for recipes with short preparation times.  If you've
got some extra liver in the fridge, get rid of it quick by searching for
recipes that tolerate liver.

    I could go on and on about the many features of COOK'S HELPER, but
there's no need (or demand) for it.  Copy the program using a file copier,
or our Copy It feature, initialize it (create the REL file), and jump right
in.

    You may find that you enjoy COOK'S HELPER as much as you do Aunt
Minnie's Rutabaga Surprise.  Make mine with creamed beets!

FT
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