[uf-new] Measure & currency

[Frances Berriman]

On 28/09/2007, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:

> I think we could, if we put our collective mines to it, have first-draft
> currency (even if only for current, decimal currencies) and measurement
> (even if only for metric values) microformat in a few weeks (and, again,
> doing so before Firefox 3 goes live would be A Good Thing [TM]). Surely
> no-one can deny the evidence that such data is widely published?

Okay.  I'm following you on this.   Recipe will definitely need
weights and measures in some form, so lets look at that in it's self
first in it's simplest form, after all a recipe pretty much is just 2
things (a list of stuff you need and how to put that stuff together).

I think there is value in correctly marking weight/volume values for
various interesting purposes (conversion, ordering, comparison etc.)
in a recipe.  We'll work out when we've done the recipe research work
whether it's actually appropriate to use "measure" or "currency" when
we get to that stage of the process.

If we're thinking in terms of using currency for the recipe format,
there's not really much supporting evidence that people know how much
their ingredients cost per lb etc. (or want to) or more importantly
they're not publishing this info, from the existing examples section.
Not that I'm saying a person wouldn't want to, mind you, or that we
won't find use-cases for doing so (and if currency is created, the
solution for doing so is available).

So, currency needs to be picked up.  I don't see it as as much of a
priority as measure though but given it's work so far, it would be a
useful piece of work to have that finished.  Measure is one we're
certainly likely to want to use and it would be best if we're using it
in the right way the first time.

There's hardly any examples for measure at the moment, so there's a
fair bit of work to be done there (nothing for recipes at least,
unless you want to say how fast your eggs were laid!).

I also concur with the difficulty of saying what a "pinch", "handful",
"to taste" or "as necessary" (and many others) will end up equating
too.  Recipes aren't necessarily concrete values so we'll have to be
aware of this and not force authors into publishing data they weren't
already.  That's something that we can discuss later though after
evidence gathering (I'm jumping the gun).

I agree that currency and measure are relatively simple concepts that
we could work through quite quickly.  So, why not.  They're valuable
pieces of information and they're worth exploring.

Apologies for slightly disjointed sentences.  Just putting out a few thoughts.


-- 
Frances Berriman
http://fberriman.com