YAMTool Description

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(Yet Another Mastercook Tool)

YAMTool Classic 1.5

Introduction

Mar 01 - YAMTool 1.5 is now available. It has the following features:

Word 2000/Word 97 Compatibility - YAMTool 1.5 has been developed under Word 2000 and tested on Word 2000 and Word 97. No known anomalies exist

MC 6 Compatibility - YAMTool works with "cut and paste" from MC 6 as well as previous MC versions. It should also support regular "Text export" files from MC.

Ingredient Table Cleanup - The contents of the ingredient table are now given the "Ingredients" style which uses a fixed 9 point spacing. Additionally, the "Amount" column is now centered during formatting.

Two Column Ingredients Printing - Based on user feedback, YAMTool now offers an option to change the ingredients table to print in two columns. Once initial fomatting is complete, select the "Format Ingredients for 2 Columns" option. In order to accomplish this, the following changes are made to the document:

Page orientation is set to landscape (8.5 wide by 5.5 high)

Ingredient column widths are shortened (text will wrap, so if your the person who took advantage of MC's new ability for 256 character ingredients, this will still work, unlike MC)

Dec 99 - YAMTool 1.0 is now available. It has the following two fixes/features:

Fixed incompatibility with MC 5's MC 4 export format (this could cause all recipes to disappear during formatting)

Added feature for changing column widths for the ingredients table. After formatting is complete, move to any ingredients table in the file and change column widths as desired. Click "Change Table Columns" and all ingredients tables in the document will be changed to match.

Welcome to YAMTool (Yet Another Mastercook Tool). No, this isn't some bizarre melding of that tuberous root and computers. YAMTool was designed in an effort to provide a simple, flexible printing feature (something that Mastercook lacks) for recipes from Mastercook 4.0x. The goal was to come up with a relatively flexible way to put recipes on paper that didn't drive me screaming from the room when I tried to change something (after a few occurrences of that, my wife told me to knock it off, since I was waking our two sons). Now, this tool doesn't try to replicate all the functionality of the Mastercook printing function (after all, who would want to?), but it does provide the basics, and has the potential for giving the commercial function a run for its money.

I designed this tool while composing the family cookbook and with the conversion to Word 97, the full power and potential of this solution has become more and more evident. So, with a little prettying up, I'm making this available to anyone who is interested.

I have a few ideas of what could be added to this (they'll be presented later), but please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think, and what you'd like to see.

Send your letters and comments to Ray Price at:

rayprice@kc.rr.com

For now, this is basically a pet project for me to keep my Word/Office skills honed, and produce something that has some intrinsic value at the same time. This is currently being distributed as freeware, and you are encouraged to pass it along to anyone who is interested.

Redistribution on a mass scale requires author permission.

YAMTool Distribution

YAMTool is composed of two files:

YAMTool.dot - A Microsoft Word 97 template file.

YAMTool Users Guide - This page is an extract from the full User's Guide..

The basic approach to YAMTool is to use Microsoft Word 97 to take a Mastercook recipe export file (.mxp) and massage it into a real document that takes advantage of all the features and capabilities of MS Word. MS Word provides a macro language that is phenomenally powerful. While the majority of us will never scratch the surface of all the capabilities that MS Word provides, this is an attempt to at least put a pretty good gouge in the surface. Thankfully, all this gouging is hidden from the average user, and you just get to sit and watch the show while YAMTool does its job.

What You Need

In order to use YAMTool you will need, or should have access to the following pieces of software:

Mastercook - A source of Mastercook formatted (.mxp) recipes (one could also use the widely popular MC Buster available on the net). I think almost any version of MC will do, but I've only tested with MC 4.0x.

Microsoft Word 97 - Since the foundation of YAMTool is an MS Word 97 template, this is a show stopper if you don’t have it.

Optionally, you might want to get the following to take advantage some of the more advanced features of YAMTool:

Microsoft Word 97 Web Authoring Update - This is available from the MS Office download site, and is only required if you want to take advantage of YAMTool's Web publishing features (more on that later).

ClickBook - This is a printing enhancement tool that will allow you to print multiple sheets on a single piece of paper. This allows you to print booklets.

	Microsoft Word 97 Web Authoring Update - This is available from the MS Office download site, and is only required if you want to take advantage of YAMTool's Web publishing features (more on that later).
	ClickBook - This is a printing enhancement tool that will allow you to print multiple sheets on a single piece of paper. This allows you to print booklets.