MacGourmet News

So, now that version 2 is out, the obvious question is "what's next?" Here's what I can talk about right now:

Most of the work on the first maintenance update, 2.0.1 is done, and I'm just in the process of testing the changes now. This release will just resolve some problems that were missed in the beta.

While testing for version 2 was being completed, I was able to do most of the work for what will be version 2.1. This update I've dubbed "the import-export update" because it adds a new plug-in architecture for creating import and export formats. What does this mean? Well, while I plan to make the information on developing plug-ins available upon request, what this really means is that it's now a lot easier for me to add support for new file formats. Import support for formats like RecipeML and Yum. Export support for formats like plain text, RTF and yes, your iPod. There is also something else pretty cool planned for this release, but I'll hold off on detailing it, even though a lot of the code has been written for it already.

Nutrition: This is one of the most requested major features. Some work HAS already been done on this, and it's my next major task. I've been holding off on adding this because it needs to be integrated correctly. You could do a whole application JUST for nutrition, so it was just too much work to add as part of version 2. It would have meant waiting a lot longer for version 2 and all of the great changes in it and I really didn't want people to have to wait. Going forward my plan is to work on and release things in clearly defined "chunks." Nutrition will be one of these chunks.

Menu planning: Another popular request. I haven't been ignoring this, but like nutrition, a whole separate app could be done just for this. Adding this needs to be done right. What I don't want to do is over-implement for this feature. MacGourmet is about recipes and notes and what you can do with them. It's not a calendar application. Still, I want to make it easy to plan your dinner party, or meals for the upcoming week, and to generate a nice shopping list to take to the market with you. My own personal goal from this feature? To be able to plan at least a few meals a week that force me to cook, and utilize all of these great recipes I have. I want MacGourmet to encourage me to cook more, cook better, and learn, by unlocking my content. Shopping lists, I know, still need work, and there will be some changes coming before this, but expect them to be improved by these goals.

Two other chunks planned? Well I'll only mention the names I've given them: the sharing release, and the sync release. There are other things that I've started work and planning on too, but I can't really go into those until they are further along.

Finally, I've already put localizations of MacGourmet into various languages into motion, so those should start showing up too.

So as you can see, there is still a lot going on in the MacGourmet world!