danegardner
Member
Until recently, I typically just use a spreadsheet and a calculator to do all of my calculations for a recipe. I really didn't like the overly complicated software packages out there, nor did I really want to spend money on something that should have been done better. Two weeks ago I set about writing my own application in my free time, with the intention of making it open source and free to all.
In order to have cross-platform compatibility with Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms I chose to use the Qt4 framework, which I'm also using in a rather large project for work. This much smaller project allowed me to try out a few things before messing with my larger code-base.
This is a much simpler and easier to learn interface than software like BeerSmith. I didn't want it to have all of the bells and whistles like inventory control or other things that I don't personally use. I feel that a cleaner interface will cause less errors come brew day.
That being said, I have added a few bells and whistles that I did want.
* Ingredient Filtering -- It can add quite a bit of time to a recipe build if I have to hunt around through a long list of ingredients. I hate it when I can't find an ingredient in a huge list because it's listed as "Crisp Maris Otter" not "Maris Otter", or "Saaz, Czech" instead of "Czech Saaz", or "2-row Caramel 20" instead of "Crystal 20". To solve this, I have added a search filtering option to my ingredients palette, which makes searching for "maris" or "saaz" or "20" so much faster and allows one to see all of the variations available in a much cleaner, simpler way. If you know what Regular Expressions are, this filter allows their use as well.
* In-Situ Editing -- Quantities and other values for a recipe is edited in the list, instead of showing an overly complicated dialog box that requires moving between the keyboard and mouse a dozen times before changing a simple value.
* Drag-and-Drop -- Ingredients can be dragged into a recipe. To me, this is far more natural than clicking a button to get a popup and selecting it from a list that is now obscuring the recipe.
* XML -- Recipes are stored as a file on the hard disk in XML format. This makes them human editable and more easily backed up. You don't have to "export" a recipe to send it to a friend, just email the file that's on your hard drive!
* Tabs -- It's easier to swap between two ingredients with the tabbed layout that I went with, than most of the other software out there. You also don't have to "save" a recipe to look at another open recipe. There's no database, so you can also open more than one window at a time. If you want to run two copies of this application at the same time, more power to you!
Things that aren't fully implemented yet include the style comparisons and printing. While you can print, it's just a simple list of ingredients and beer properties. Style comparisons will be in a later version.
Currently, the source is publicly available on GitHub at <https://github.com/DaneGardner/ThreeBrooks> and I have a Windows beta available for download (link at bottom of post) if anybody is willing to be a guinea pig.
I have tested it in Fedora 14, and it works as well as it does in Windows, however I'm too lazy to create an RPM for it right now, so if you want a Linux version, you'll have to compile it yourself. I also don't have access to a Mac right now, but the build instructions on the wiki <https://github.com/DaneGardner/ThreeBrooks/wiki> should get you there if you really want to try it out.
Here are some simple screenshots of it in action.
Download current version:
<http://danegardner.github.com/ThreeBrooks/ThreeBrooks-v0.1-beta1.zip>
If anybody has any questions feel free to ask them here, or PM me.
In order to have cross-platform compatibility with Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms I chose to use the Qt4 framework, which I'm also using in a rather large project for work. This much smaller project allowed me to try out a few things before messing with my larger code-base.
This is a much simpler and easier to learn interface than software like BeerSmith. I didn't want it to have all of the bells and whistles like inventory control or other things that I don't personally use. I feel that a cleaner interface will cause less errors come brew day.
That being said, I have added a few bells and whistles that I did want.
* Ingredient Filtering -- It can add quite a bit of time to a recipe build if I have to hunt around through a long list of ingredients. I hate it when I can't find an ingredient in a huge list because it's listed as "Crisp Maris Otter" not "Maris Otter", or "Saaz, Czech" instead of "Czech Saaz", or "2-row Caramel 20" instead of "Crystal 20". To solve this, I have added a search filtering option to my ingredients palette, which makes searching for "maris" or "saaz" or "20" so much faster and allows one to see all of the variations available in a much cleaner, simpler way. If you know what Regular Expressions are, this filter allows their use as well.
* In-Situ Editing -- Quantities and other values for a recipe is edited in the list, instead of showing an overly complicated dialog box that requires moving between the keyboard and mouse a dozen times before changing a simple value.
* Drag-and-Drop -- Ingredients can be dragged into a recipe. To me, this is far more natural than clicking a button to get a popup and selecting it from a list that is now obscuring the recipe.
* XML -- Recipes are stored as a file on the hard disk in XML format. This makes them human editable and more easily backed up. You don't have to "export" a recipe to send it to a friend, just email the file that's on your hard drive!
* Tabs -- It's easier to swap between two ingredients with the tabbed layout that I went with, than most of the other software out there. You also don't have to "save" a recipe to look at another open recipe. There's no database, so you can also open more than one window at a time. If you want to run two copies of this application at the same time, more power to you!
Things that aren't fully implemented yet include the style comparisons and printing. While you can print, it's just a simple list of ingredients and beer properties. Style comparisons will be in a later version.
Currently, the source is publicly available on GitHub at <https://github.com/DaneGardner/ThreeBrooks> and I have a Windows beta available for download (link at bottom of post) if anybody is willing to be a guinea pig.
I have tested it in Fedora 14, and it works as well as it does in Windows, however I'm too lazy to create an RPM for it right now, so if you want a Linux version, you'll have to compile it yourself. I also don't have access to a Mac right now, but the build instructions on the wiki <https://github.com/DaneGardner/ThreeBrooks/wiki> should get you there if you really want to try it out.
Here are some simple screenshots of it in action.
Download current version:
<http://danegardner.github.com/ThreeBrooks/ThreeBrooks-v0.1-beta1.zip>
If anybody has any questions feel free to ask them here, or PM me.
