PCjs Machines

One of the toughest parts of being in charge of family meals is
deciding, week after week, what you're going to cook.  Another tough
part is trying to remember to put all the important ingredients
down on one shopping list so you can actually cook the meals.
If you're rich, you avoid the whole problem and get a housekeeper. If
you're smart, you get MEAL MASTER.

MEAL MASTER is the program that home users dreamt about when the
computer industry said, "... and you can keep recipes in it, too!" Now
you really can. MEAL MASTER stores up to 500 recipes,
automatically schedules up to 14 days of meals, and creates and
prints a shopping list of ingredients in all the meals on your
schedule.

MEAL MASTER is easy to get along with, too.  You have total control
over the recipes, schedules and lists.  You can print any or all of
your recipes and change the number of servings they're written for. You
can easily edit your shopping list before you print it so it only shows
the items you need to buy rather than everything you're going to cook.

Even if normal meal planning is a breeze for you, MEAL MASTER can prove
invaluable for those special occasions when you find yourself catering a
family reunion or having to plan two weeks worth of meals for a nursery
school program.  Whatever size family you're feeding, MEAL MASTER can
make the process almost painless.

Disk No: 2128                                                           
Disk Title: Meal Master                                                 
PC-SIG Version: 1.2                                                     
                                                                        
Program Title: MEAL MASTER                                              
Author Version: 1.5                                                     
Author Registration: $12.00                                             
Special Requirements: 512K RAM.                                         
                                                                        
One of the toughest parts of being in charge of family meals is         
deciding, week after week, what you're going to cook.  Another tough    
part is trying to remember to put ALL the important ingredients         
down on one shopping list so you can actually cook the meals.           
If you're rich, you avoid the whole problem and get a housekeeper.      
If you're smart, you get MEAL MASTER.                                   
                                                                        
MEAL MASTER is the program that home users dreamt about when the        
computer industry said, ". . and you can keep recipes in it, too!"      
Now you really can.  MEAL MASTER stores up to 500 recipes,              
automatically schedules up to 14 days of meals, and creates and         
prints a shopping list of ingredients in all the meals on your          
schedule.                                                               
                                                                        
MEAL MASTER is easy to get along with, too.  You have total control     
over the recipes, schedules and lists.  You can print any or all of     
your recipes and change the number of servings they're written for.     
You can easily edit your shopping list before you print it so it only   
shows the items you need to buy rather than everything you're going to  
cook.                                                                   
                                                                        
Even if normal meal planning is a breeze for you, MEAL MASTER can       
prove invaluable for those special occasions when you find yourself     
catering a family reunion or having to plan two weeks worth of meals    
for a nursery school program.  Whatever size family you're feeding,     
MEAL MASTER can make the process almost painless.                       
                                                                        
PC-SIG                                                                  
1030D East Duane Avenue                                                 
Sunnyvale  Ca. 94086                                                    
(408) 730-9291                                                          
(c) Copyright 1989 PC-SIG, Inc.                                         

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║               <<<<  PC-SIG Disk #2128  MEAL MASTER  >>>>                ║
╠═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ To print installation instructions, type:  COPY README PRN (Enter)      ║
║                                                                         ║
║ To print registration form, type:  COPY REGISTER PRN (press Enter)      ║
║                                                                         ║
║ Once program is installed, to start program, type:  MM (press Enter)    ║
║                                                                         ║
║ Follow instructions according to the MM.TXT file.                       ║
╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
(c) Copyright 1990, PC-SIG Inc.

Meal Master

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. Meal Master 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 Meal Master. 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

Meal Master was designed to be fast and easy to use. With it you
can manage your recipes, automatically create meal schedules,
and produce shopping lists. Meal Master 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 Meal Master going
most efficiently. There really is nothing complicated about
getting Meal Master running, but there are some things that
should be made clear.  

What You Need

In order to run properly, Meal Master 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 Meal Master Distribution Disk


Making Working Copies

I would highly recommend making a working copy of the Meal
Master disk and then put the original away in a safe place
BEFORE actually beginning to use Meal Master. Meal Master 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 ■
           MM ■

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

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

You now have a bootable disk which will automatically come up
with Meal Master running. Using Meal Master 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 "MEAL MASTER
           WORKING DISK".
              FORMAT A:/S ■

    2      Format another floppy without DOS on it and mark it "MEAL
           MASTER 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 MM.EXE
           from it to the "WORKING DISK".
              COPY B:MM.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 Meal Master by typing:
              MM ■

    12        Change the default data drive in Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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. Meal Master
is started by typing MM or putting that command into a batch
file. For example...

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

    C: ■

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

    CD MM ■

    COPY A:*.* ■Quick Look

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

Once you start Meal Master 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 Meal Master. 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 Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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). Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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
Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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. Meal
Master 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 Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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
Meal Master which type of dish this is. If you have an "S" in
this field, this tells Meal Master 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. Meal Master 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. Meal Master
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 show 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. Meal Master 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, Meal Master 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, Meal
Master 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, Meal Master 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. Meal Master 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, Meal
Master 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 Meal Master
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, Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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, Meal Master 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, Meal Master 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, Meal Master checks for
duplicates to make sure a particular recipe doesn't show up more
than once for that dish. 

Once the schedule is finished Meal Master 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 Meal Master. So in order to
allow you to make changes, Meal Master 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

Meal Master 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, Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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 questi on 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

Lets talk about each of the options: 


Data Path

The first thing shown at the top of the screen is the current
path for Meal Master's data files. This tells Meal Master 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 Meal Master on a hard disk
drive which happens to be drive C, and you have its data files
in a separate subdirectory labeled MMDATA, the string you would
need to enter would be "C:\MMDATA\".  Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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 Meal Master 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
Meal Master for any number from 0 to the maximum number. For
example, you may not wish to have Meal Master plan beverages, so
you can put a 0 in the beverages fields of each meal. Or you may
wish to have Meal Master 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 Meal Master
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 Meal Master 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 charac-
teristics 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 "/". Meal Master 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, Meal Master will use dashes (-)
and bars (|) to outline the printouts. 


Final Remarks

Well, I hope this little user's guide will help you get the most 
out of Meal Master.  I think Meal Master 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 Meal Master 
and pass along any ideas you may have to improve it. I also
want to hear about any problems you encounter in using Meal Master. 
The more comments I hear, the better Meal Master will become. I 
will appreciate whatever you have to say. 


Thank you for using Meal Master!       
 

Thomas C. Johnson 

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.

 Volume in drive A has no label
 Directory of A:\

MM       EXE    124016   5-19-90   8:46a
RECIPE   DAT    124656   5-09-90  10:04a
MM       TXT     52651   6-06-90  10:07p
README            7935   5-06-90   9:30p
REGISTER          3578   5-09-90  12:21p
CONVERT  EXE     16576   5-09-90   9:43a
FILE2128 TXT      3035   9-04-90   1:31p
GO       BAK       960   1-01-80   6:01a
GO       BAT        40   1-01-80   6:00a
GO       TXT       881   1-01-80   5:53a
       10 file(s)     334328 bytes
                       23552 bytes free