An adventure in diving log software

Wed Feb 20 08:40:44 PST 2013

So... I'm going for a two week dive trip tomorrow, and went looking for 
some dive log software for my tablet.

Dive Log [1] looked promising, and it could export the log files.  But 
the CSV export format was lacking, and the "backup" format didn't have 
any specification.  So I contacted Rob (the Dive Log author), and he 
kindly supplied the backup format specification, in addition to 
promising to fix a formatting bug.  What a guy!

But it doesn't stop there.  When I asked about whether he could add an 
XML export feature, he asked my advice on how to use and export to the 
Subsurface format natively. Such a good idea! So that's in Rob's 
pipeline now.

At the same time, I contacted Rainer Mohr (the author of the 
en.divelogs.de online dive log) about supporting the Dive Log backup 
format.  And after a couple of emails and hours, the import [2] was in 
production!  So cool!

While I was talking to Rainer, I asked if he was able to provide XML 
export from divelogs, since the current UDCF export doesn't provide all 
the stored data.  And sure, after some more emails and hours, he even 
provided an official XML export [3]. Fantastic!

So, this would only need an XLST transform in Subsurface to be 
supported.  Miika to the rescue:  He provided a patch and a transform in 
an extremely short time.   It lacks a couple of small things (longitude 
and empty pressures needs some care), but it's almost perfect.  I'm 
attaching the beta version of the patch for those interested.

All in all, this has been a great day for dive software, and for me.  
Three guys have impressed me a lot.

And Dirk, we can postpone this feature until 3.1 :)

Cheers,
Henrik

[1] 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shuffledbits.divelog&hl=en
[2] http://en.divelogs.de/upload_adl.php
[3] http://en.divelogs.de/export.php (DLD Export)
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