Subject: Re: struct dive_table dive_table and a wider view

[Alex Deas]

Dear Henrik,

Thanks.  We understand the internal XML format and that UDDF is simply the
preferred front end reader to the dive computer.     It did not seem appropriate
to try and export straight into the Subsurface storage format bypassing UDDF,
because as far we understood the Subsurface format was not intended as an
interchange standard.    What we misunderstood is that we thought Subsurface was
handling UDDF development as well as the Subsurface log browser.   Perhaps if
Subsurface had gone down the road of resolving the problems with UDDF, then
there may not even have been the need to be the extra XML storage format, and
everything would be very clean and tidy.

On Dirk's response of forking Subsurface, that is a last resort and not our
intent.   One possibility is us contributing an API capability to Subsurface, to
enable the sort of extensions I mentioned to be accommodated.   Subsurface seems
reasonably well layered so I would hope it could support that.   I can't see
anything on APIs or plug-ins in the Subsurface repository, but we are looking at
the feasibility: we are in no rush as we have the DiveLab tool which works fine
and can continue that as long as we like.

With kind regards,

Alex

On 18 April 2013 at 11:36 Henrik Brautaset Aronsen <subsurface at henrik.synth.no>
wrote:
> Alex Deas wrote:
> > On the structure, would there be any interest from the UDDF/SubSurface
> > community in upgrading the dive log structures in a bigger way?
>
> Hi Alex!
>
> Thanks for your interest in Subsurface. I just thought I'd clear up a
> little thing: Subsurface utilize its own compact and human readable XML
> dive log format.
>
> UDDF is not used internally, mostly because it's an overly engineered,
> unnecessarily complex and quite unreadable format. We merely provide
> convenient UDDF import and export options via XSLT transforms. These
> options might not be complete, but we are more than willing to improve
> them to support (a future version of) UDDF better, if necessary.
>
> I guess others have something to say about this and the rest of your
> email as well :)
>
> Cheers,
> Henrik
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