More improvement ideas

[LuxMiranda]

Wow! We've been getting so many new contributions thanks to Hacktoberfest. That's awesome!

When I first started Herm's there was a huge list of features that I thought would be cool to have. Now, we've nearly implemented all of them! 👏

Once we finish up this unit conversion business, I really feel comfortable making the first real "release" of Herm's to distribute throughout package repositories to share this labor of love that we've created.

In the meantime, though, post any ideas that you might have for additional improvements or features in this thread. See Contributing.md for the current list to make sure it hasn't already been thought of! :)

[langston-barrett]

I have put in a few ideas in issues but I want to give a high-level outline and plan of how they relate to one another. I'll tag different PRs as they occur and edit this comment as my roadmap evolves (and is implemented!)

Pantry management

• The user can specify what ingredients they own
• What they own is subtracted from shopping lists
• They can (interactively, with confirmation) subtract the ingredients they used making a recipe

YAML file based interface (#45)

Currently, to add a recipe one must use the terminal UI to add a recipe. I would prefer to be able to specify my recipes in a human- and machine-readable, interoperable, programming-language neutral format.

Ideally, Herms should serve as a front-end to dealing with these YAML files.

This dovetails nicely with pantry management, where I'd like to be able to easy read/write what's in my pantry with my favorite text editor.

What can I make? (#73)

Again, this is post pantry management implementation.

More sophisticated combining/subtracting of ingredients

The current implementation (#71) only combines ingredients with the same units. Optimally, it would combine ingredients with the same dimensionality. If two ingredients have the same name but different units, Herms should interactively ask the user if and how they can be combined or diffed.

Better support for meal planning and prepping

• Ingredients should optionally record
  • when they were bought
  • when they expire
  • if, how, and when they can be prepared ahead of time
• Recipes should include prep time and total time

Let me know what you think @JackKiefer. I don't think any of these should disturb current workflows, though several of them will involve breaking changes in recipe/ingredient formats.