[pmwiki-users] Cookbook recipes and organization

[Martin Fick]

> I'm just imagining I'm searching the recipes for a solution.
> Now I imagine seeing a "See Also" button. What's my reaction?
> 
> ... well, for me personally, it's a big sigh: I'll have to read that 
> other recipe as well. Then I have to (somehow) infer from the surface 
> descriptions which of the recipes is better suited. I'm forced to make a 
> decision that I'm not ready for yet - and, frankly, I don't want to 
> evaluate two recipes, I want a *solution*!


  I have to agree with most of this.  I have been looking
into forms and currently there are several solutions which
all seem complicated, I have even tried some and still
don't understand them well enough to figure out what I
need.  Maybe this simply points to the fact that this is
a new area, but it is confusing.

  I think that generally fewer recipes is the answer.  If
there are several recipes, they ought to be clearly
different and unique.  The key here is "clearly". :)  If
you think a recipe is important but it is similar to
another one, make sure it is well understood why it should
be kept and why it shouldn't be cut/merged with the other
recipe.  Maybe to start with, they can say 'see also'
followed by a comment 'saying merge these recipes'.

  I can think of few other examples:  

   -The fortune cookie and random line from a file recipes.
    Seems very similar and ripe for merging.

   -There are also many image/gallery recipes.  I think that
    many people are experimenting here and hopefully things
    will consolidate soon.


  -Martin