hello -
i’m new to dtp and am interested in using it for a variety of uses. one of the first projects i’m planning to undertake is organizing a variety of recipes. the things i want to accomplish by this are quite varied and so i think the process will help me become accustomed to dtp and how best to use it.
since i’m new to this, i wanted to get suggestions/advice/caveats before starting so i don’t undertake an organization approach that i’ll regret later. here’s some info:
source material:
- scanned magazines (just bought the scansnap s1500m)
- text files that contain hand transcribed recipes
- web clippings (recipes i run across online)
- possibly some jpegs (e.g., take a photo of a recipe with a camera while away on vacation, etc)
desired search functionality (in addition to searching by title of file):
- would like to be able to search by meal categories, like “main dish,” “appetizer,” etc.
- would like to be able to search by main ingredient, like “chicken,” “beef,” “tomatoes,” etc.
- would like to be able to search by tags/annotations that i add myself, like “recipe to try,” “favorite,” etc.
other desired functionality:
- would like to be able to annotate recipes with comments after making them (e.g., next time try using less salt, etc)
- would like to be able to annotate recipes with ratings (e.g, on a scale of 1-10) and then later be able to order search results based on those ratings (e.g., finding all “main dish” recipes and then ordering them based on the ratings)
i’m totally new to this and so would appreciate any advice. for example, i’m not sure how detailed i need to get in terms of groups and subgroups…or whether i can/should just keep all of the recipes in one group and organize them in some other fashion. also, i don’t know if each of the things i’m interested in are doable or not and for the ones that are, what is the best way to go about implementation.
thanks in advance!