Re: [CH] Why QBook for DOS is better than Mealmaster
Kudjing@aol.com
Mon, 2 Apr 2001 17:40:12 EDT
In a message dated 4/2/01 4:33:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
raincrone@juno.com writes:
>
> I have for many years used the good ol' DOS-based version of QBook, which
> is vastly simpler and less annoying than any version of Mealmaster
> whatever. It will import recipes in any format or none, and doesn't
> impose an annoying, clunky one of its own.
>
That last point alone is enough to make me prick up my ears.
The snake in the garden for MM-users is importing unformatted recipes. Even
with a good freeware utility -- MMbuster, for example -- it's a bit of a
drag. MM's bundled conversion utility is flakey at best.
> This will tell ya a lot: there are bunches of mailing lists and Usenet
> groups (and used to be all kinds of BBS-based echoes) devoted to helping
> baffled people figure out Mealmaster's problems and requirements...
Hmmm...I was a member of such a group for some time, and unsubscribed because
the questions were, with rare-exceptions, were the same ones over and over.
Problems were usually printer-related or had to do with format conversion.
>
> True, it has a less robust search function; the Quicksearch thingy is
> really pretty near useless, in
> fact. But QBook will do nested searches, something the oithers won't.
>
That's another feature that I find pretty attractive.
>
> And, yes, I've heard the dire warnings about "QBook will crash on ya",
> yadda yadda, but I've never had a
> crash in nearly ten years' use, and of all the many QBook users I know,
> I've never known but one person who did. Whereas I've heard from dozens
> of Mastercook and Mealmaster users who've had those program crash on 'em,
> sometimes locking up their machines in the process.
"Crash" can mean a lot of things...unless you're talking about a corrupted
database, no problem. I don't mind the occasional reboot.
In the years I've used MM, I''ve only had the program terminate unexpectedly
when I've been using the conversion utility. Never had to reboot. And I've
run the program on everything from an 8088-based machine running DOS 3.X, to
a 286 running DR-DOS, to modern fancy-pants WIN 98, WIN ME etc. Seems pretty
stable to me.
Aside from the drawbacks mentioned above -- awkward conversions, and lack of
a nested search ability -- the only real problem with MM is that it doesn't
do well handling *large* amounts of recipes: databases are limited to about
36,000. Those of us who are real recipe-pigs find that a bit limiting. Also,
the utter lack of mouse-support can be annoying to some people.
On the other hand, it's stable, flexible, allows you to search your databases
in a number of different ways, and is fairly intuitive. It's also freeware,
as are the major 3rd party utilities that are used with it. (One of these
utilities, MMbuster, converts *most* formats without difficulty, and others
with a bit of editing. It handles unformatted recipes reasonably gracefully,
with minimal editing.)
There are also lots of MM-format recipes out there on the web, though not so
many as there once were. Scott Welliver is rumored to be working on a
Windows version of the program, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'll post a URL for MM a little later today, and, if I can find it, for
Q-book as well.
And, just so I can pretend I'm on-topic, I'll be glad to send anyone who
wants them a few hundred MM-format chile-oriented recipes, if you'll send me
an email, and be very, very, very patient.
-- Dan//who suspects he's going to be deluged with email in the very near
future...