About Cookbooks

Note: many of the references on this page allude to features of the MediaWiki platform and don't apply to GitHub Wiki—there is at this time no prescribed way to add to the Cookbooks

Table of Contents Why Cookbooks? Making a Cookbook Making a Recipe Example 1 Example 2 Putting your Recipe in the right Cookbook Tracking Cookbook Changes Requesting a Cookbook Recipe Updating the Cookbook List Cookbook References

Why Cookbooks?

It is highly recommended to take notes of any kind related to Rebol that are easily lost or forgotten and store it in DocBase. However, since DocBase is normally very strict with what is appropriate to put there, the Cookbooks section in DocBase is the place to put things that don't fit into the rest of DocBase. The criteria that makes for a Cookbook is loosely:

• It should be a Rebol related topic that is hard to describe in a few words.
• It should be important information that does not fit into the rest of DocBase, such as implementation notes for a protocol, scheme or algorithm or how to perform a lengthy procedure or things that are tricky to do in Rebol.
• You can also discuss features about a particular product built in Rebol or produce a tutorial for it.

The best example is really just to look at the current list of cookbook titles and see, if your documentation will fit.

Cookbooks are made to insure that such important information is not scattered or lost. We've suffered in the past with many websites containing vital Rebol information that are moved or lost. This information becomes hard to find over time, so the Cookbook list is going to be the primary source of such information. You are highly encouraged to use it!

Making a Cookbook

A Cookbook is a list of recipes. Cookbooks are divided into areas of interest, such as Networking, Lowlevel Graphics, Highlevel Graphics or Data Processing. More can be added as seen fit.

The list of Cookbooks is avaliable here.

Making a Recipe

For a Cookbook recipe, simply create a page with any title in DocBase. Add the template

{{Cookbook | title=Short Title | author=Name | level=[1, 2 or 3] | category=Category}}

at the top of the document. Then add the document page name in the Cookbook list and then link to it from there.

To initiate a new DocBase page, the easiest way is to type your preferred page title into the Search field of the DocBase Navigation section and press Go.

While not totally necessary, cookbooks should start with the {{Cookbook}} template. This template accepts 4 parameters. A title, an author, a difficulty level and a category.

• title does not need to be the same as the page title. Use something short and snappy. If not included a generic Rebol Recipe will be used.
• author would be what ever credit you would like. If not included Incognito will be used.
• level is a number from 1 to 3. 1 matches Beginner, 2 for Intermediate and 3 for Advanced. 2 is default.
• category should be Tip, Code, Networking, Data Processing etcetera. Defaults to Code.

Example 1

{{Cookbook|title=Handling Binary Data|level=3|category=Code}}

Would produce

Example 2

{{Cookbook|title=Client Server|author=Luke Lakeswimmer|level=2|category=Networking}}

produces

Putting your Recipe in the right Cookbook

There are many topics to discuss for Rebol, so there is more than one Cookbook. It's generally so that one topic is one Cookbook. The current list of Cookbooks is derived from the cookbook list for Rebol 2.

The current topics are:

• Low- and Mid-Level Networking
• Rebol/Services
• Rebcode
• Low-Level Graphics
• VID
• OpenGL
• Data Processing
• Security
• Scripting
• Plugin
• Modules
• Tasking
• File Management
• Error Handling
• Debugging
• Dates and Times
• Console
• Rebol Language
• Audio
• Numbers and Math
• Mediatypes
• System
• Embedded
• Windows
• MacOSX
• Linux
• Documentation
• R2 vs. R3
• FAQ
• RT Developer

Tracking Cookbook Changes

If you've done one of the following:

• Created or deleted a cookbook
• Created or deleted a recipe
• Changed the title for a cookbook or a recipe
• Moved a recipe to a different cookbook

Please add those changes to the Cookbook Changes page in the format shown on that page, as well as updating the Cookbook List. This helps users to keep track of major changes to the cookbook list.

We don't list cookbook changes if you've only made a change or addition in an existing cookbook recipe.

Requesting a Cookbook Recipe

If you are in doubt of how to perform a specific procedure that fits with a Cookbook recipe, you can add it to the list of requested cookbooks here.

Updating the Cookbook List

The Cookbook list is currently a small list, but in the future it will be upgraded to a complex table that describes the current state, the author(s) and the merit for a specific document. This list will possibly be so complex that we have to manage it with a Rebol script in the future.

Cookbook References