Minor UI improvements

[ockham]

Converted from SourceForge issue 2454410, submitted by SourceForge user nobody on 2008-12-20 16:30:20 UTC.

Thanks for the wonderful program! I'm using the 0.13.x on fedora 10.

I had a couple of minor UI improvement suggestions --

(1) The units should be descriptive by default and preferences should have an option to show detailed units or abbrevations.

For example, Grams should be listed as "grams" instead og "g." by default.

(2) Preparation time and Cooking time can be a drop down. This ensures easier input.

For example,

0 0
1 1
2 2
..
..

(3) Sometimes I enter recipes from foreign cookbooks and the ingredients have different names.. so in the "Add ingredient UI" it's better to allow alternative name so that we can enter a local equivalent name.

Also, can a few default recipes be loaded?

Thanks again!

[ockham]

Submitted by SourceForge user thomas_hinkle on 2008-12-23 14:20:28 UTC.

The conversion features you want are largely already in place.

If you go into the ingredients editor, for example, and change "lb." to "kg.", Gourmet will ask you if you want to convert the amount (i.e. 0.45 kg) or just change the unit (1 kg).

You can also open Tools->Unit Converter to do one-time conversion on the fly.

Tom

[ockham]

Submitted by SourceForge user dimethicone on 2008-12-23 08:33:33 UTC.

I agree with #1. I believe the units should be clearer. For example, I have a recipe with "1/2 tsp salt" and "1/4 tsp. ginger", yet the units "tsp"/"tsp." are not different. Also for example, the unit "c." is extremely vague. Granted, someone won't try to bake bread using Flour at 3 & 2/3rds the Speed of Light, or work on how much water is 1 & 1/4ths calories, but there are measurements of length/volume/mass/temperature that can make it vague. The unit "c." representing "cup/s" is an assumption of mine. I have recipes with "1 cup" or "2 cups" typed in, and I don't know if Gourmet knows if cup = c. The unit itself isn't standardized internationally, so who knows.

I also disagree with a dropdown for preparation time. Very few recipes take days, and seconds is incredibly specific. Dropdowns also aren't very fast to use. Adding ingredients is already time consuming when switching between keyboard and mouse.

I don't understand #3, but it may be related to a feature request I'll be making in the future (a unit converter, eg. everything to metric). I'll elaborate/argue it elsewhere.

On default recipes, I would mostly disagree. If anyone here has used Apple's AddressBook.app, they'll know how annoying it is when it constantly adds in Apple's addresses and contact information to every addressbook. However, I think that example recipes (maybe some developer favourites) could be excellent as an importable file to show off just what Gourmet is capable of. An option to automatically import such recipes could be given on the first run, but that is more intrusive.

[ockham]

Submitted by SourceForge user thomas_hinkle on 2008-12-20 16:36:09 UTC.

(1) seems maybe reasonable -- the only question is whether the full words will make ingredients take up too much space on the screen.

(2) I disagree with. I find dropdowns much harder to use than just typing.

(3) Is the alternative name situation really so different from other situations where the ingredient item contains more than just it's standard name -- for example when it includes instructions such as "at room temperature"? It seems like this is handled already by the ingredient/ingredient-key set-up.

As to default recipes -- that's not a bad idea. They could be used to showcase some of the features of Gourmet such as images etc.