Text 7186, 77 rader
Skriven 2006-11-02 17:10:20 av Ian Hoare (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av DAVE SACERDOTE
Ärende: Re: Recipe program
==========================
Hi DAVE and Sean, 

 on Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:37:34 -0500, you said:-

>SD>  You know, with this talk of MealMaster and DOS, maybe I should 
>SD>  think about writing a MealMaster clone.
>
>I'd be interested.  Here's what I would like:

[snip]
So would I, very. 

Sean, first of all,  before you even START doing a clone, why not ask Scott
if he'd like to part with the source code? He obviously has no interest in
carrying on, and just as for GoldEd, there is some precedent for that sort
of think happening.

Secondly. There are several things I'd like to see, but it's about 3 years
since I've used MM, so I don't know that I can remember them all. I do know
that one of them would be the ability to successively select. I don't
remember exactly how it worked and what I found frustrating, but it was - I
think - to do with refining searching. I'd also vERY much have liked greatly
improved editing capabilities, a "preparation field" ie 2 lg tomatoes
[sliced] (where sliced would be the prep field) I'd like a very much bigger
ingredient field and a bigger prep field than NYC has. Like Dave (I guess),
I'd love to take part in a brainstorming session to improve the original
program. I absolutely agree that pictures & nutritional stuff are a waste of
time. 

I'd also be delighted to beta test - alpha test for that matter. 


>Side note to Ian:  I agree with you about some of your
>criticisms of NYC, however, I have never had a problem with
>the search function and I don't find the program slow at
>all.

My promblem with the Search function, Dave, is that you can't do a single
multi criteria search. "Pork" in the title, "casserole, french, spicy" in
the categories and "IMH" in the instructions. I also badly missed MM's
ability to _exclude_ items. with -. Thus:- casserole, french -spicy 
I also would like to do successive searches, starting from what you had
already. 

When I said "slow" I mean clunky. If you want to export - always in MM
format and always to a file called "NYC export.txt in "Agent/data, you had
to solemnly plod through a string of clicks to do so. I REALLY want to be
able to set up all the program defaults in a MM.ini file, which is normally
program set, but which, like Agent, or Eudora, can be human edited. 

I can't THINK of how many frustrations I've had with that kind of clunky
interface in NYC. In many respects I find MM was way ahead. 

>Back to you, Sean:  Text interface is an excellent choice
>for a menu program.

Agreed.

> I hope you decide to tinker with it, and I will help out in any way that I
can, bearing in mind that 
>I'm not a programmer.

So do I and so will I, within the limits of other commitments. I used to
write quite good programs, which sold - at first in Basic (Spectrum - shush)
and then in Z80 machine language. I'm a sloppy, error prone programmer, but
I am good at program design - look and feel. 

But first of all, see if Scott Welliver would consider sharing his source
code.

I don't want to exclude anyone from this, but Dale, Dave are you happy about
this echo being used for program design?

Bon appetit
Ian in Forges
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