Add comments field for ingredients

Committed to dev.

I commend jvandervort and tzoscott for all of the recent modifications to the recipe module. I have now downloaded and tested the new processing/notes field for a recipe's ingredients. The new code appears to work well. Just based upon this modification, I would encourage you to roll out a new D6 version of this module.

I have now modified several recipes to separate the specific ingredient from its preparation instructions or notes about what might be substituted. As a result, I am now seeing both ingredients "garlic" (from the modified recipes) and "garlic, minced" (from a recipe that has not been modified to use the new notes field). This is good and I would encourage users of this module to upgrade soon. After such an upgrade, it will be necessary to go through each of your recipes separating out the recipe ingredient from its size or how it should be prepared.

In due time, I would suggest by default that the width of the ingredient field be narrowed and the extra length be added to the display of the notes field.

In two cases, I entered notes that exceeded the length of the notes field. In both of these instances, I included ... code that pointed the user to a separate recipe about how that ingredient should be prepared. My normal use of such links exceeded the 256 character limit on this field. When customized, I could get the link to work. However, longer-term it is clear that the notes field needs to be of greater size in the event that an administrator/user wants to include more than just plain ASCII text description.

As I test and more extensively use this great Drupal module, how would you like me to provide feed back? Should I open new issues for what I have found or should I respond to posts like this one? Thanks in advance.

Lars

Thanks for the feedback.
Yes, please add new issues for any suggestions or bug reports. That way when we fix them, we can link the issue with the committed fix.

Wow, I never thought of adding a link into the notes field, but might be a nice solution to the "frosting" problem where you want to have a separate recipe for an ingredient that requires detailed preparation or to allow reuse in other recipes. The only glitch would be that you'd have to add the link separately to each recipe that used it. Other solutions might be an ingredient footnote and links at the bottom.

I am sorry, but I have never rolled a patch. Hence, I have no idea of what specifically is involved.

Lars

As an example, some of my recipes refer to the inclusion of a chicken, beef, pork or seafood stock. Generally, I include text indicating that the stock could be purchased or developed using the following linked preparation instructions. That custom link string can exceed 200 characters and definitely will exceed 256 characters if I were to include links to more than one stock recipe.

Any idea of how many characters would work for you. I don't think this is 'the' normal use of notes/process, but it seems like a good idea.

To keep the notes process database field a managable size, I would use 256 characters. Links to other recipes used to prepare a specific ingredient can be put in the notes section if a longer string is needed.

So you're ok with the current db size, but you want the display a little wider on the recipe edit screen?

Ideally I would like the process field wider that the ingredient field. After editing several recipes for the addition of the new field, I note that the ingredient text string is often shorter than the processing note text.

Committed a little bigger note field.