wishlist

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Tue, 2013-05-21 at 16:06 +0100, Pedro Neves wrote:
> Hi all:
> 
> First let me thank you for all the replies to my original message.
> 
> Then, thanks Dirk for pointing me to trac.hohndel.org
> However, I couldn't find any mention to it on the Subsurface page 
> (http://subsurface.hohndel.org/). Maybe we could put a pointer to it 
> somewhere...

Really?

http://subsurface.hohndel.org/bugtracker/

;-)

> Regarding some of my "wishes", let me clarify and summarize what we have 
> so far:
> 
> Logbook:
> 
> - Tags: we agree that we should have user created tags, together with 
> some predefined tags. Maybe we could add the possibility for the user to 
> delete some of the predefined tags?

why delete them? Just curious.

>      I also like the idea of the hierarchical tags.
> 
> - Dive profile comparison: I understand that we can "compare the same 
> dive downloaded from two different dive computers", but I think 
> superimposing would be a much easier way to compare the profiles. Of 
> course if we superimpose 2 profiles with all the usual info (te it will 
> be very confusing,  but comparing only the depth/time profiles would be 
> a nice feature and not too cluttered.

Certainly something we can investigate. Please file a ticket :-)

> Diveplanner:
> 
> - VPM-B and Büelmann 86 (with and without GF) algorithms: I understand 
> the limitations of not having a good free implementation of it. However 
> and although I agree that the algorithms are just guesses, pretty much 
> everybody follows them by using a dive computer. I believe that we might 
> not see significant differences between VPM and Buehlmann with GF and 
> that the comparison will be mostly for curiosity, but still that's 
> something that would add value to Subsurface. I admit, however, that 
> it's not a priority. Nevertheless, I'm willing to help implementing it. 
> I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy of Decoplanner and run some 
> tests comparing the same dive profile with both algorithms...

Here's my analysis. It took us a solid month of work by multiple people
to get the current implementation in place. We've had several lengthy
discussions with people who were complaining about subtleties that are
different from the way things are done in dive computers (e.g., dive
computer take the ascent into account when calculating ceilings, dive
computers often let you exit the water before mathematically you should
be able to - in one example, once the ceiling is less than 20cm it lets
you exit, which with some slow tissues can make a several minute
difference in final deco stop). Adding more algorithms will take more
development time from developers who could work on things that are
interesting to a larger audience. I believe there are already a couple
of tools out there that allow experimentation with different models.

Frankly for the target audience of Subsurface my guess is that fewer
than 1% of them are interested in this. While >50% might be interested
in, say, better handling of tags. Or the ability to associate pictures
that you took during a dive with the dive profile.

So I'm much more likely to encourage that.

> Dive analysis:
> 
>   - Check tissue tensions during the dive and compare it to its 
> M-values: what I mean is having a table showing the times and tissues 
> where tissue tension is more than 80% (or any user defined value) of the 
> m-value for that tissue at that depth.

Again - how many of our users will really care about this. You and...?
I do a bit of technical diving and I cannot envision myself looking at
that. But then maybe I'm wrong and there are thousands of people who
don't use Subsurface because it is missing this one feature :-)

> My contributions:
> > Our Portuguese translation is incomplete (have you signed
> > up on Transifex?). And input is always welcome
> I've already signed up on Transifex. I've submitted all the translations 
> for Subsurface and for the Companion App and I have the Readme file 
> ready to upload. However the Transifex site tells me that the Readme 
> file is not accepting translations at the moment.

Yes, the readme was uploaded as an experiment and we (I) couldn't quite
figure out how to make that useful to the user, so I locked the
translation so translators wouldn't spend unnecessary time on it :-(

I assume that I'll make a 3.1.1 release in a few weeks and I will of
course pull your Portuguese translation for that. Thank you so much.

Would you be interested in helping to translate the website as well?

We had a volunteer start and then fade away :-(

> Other wishes:
> 
> Equipment: I'm not sure if this makes sense, or if it escapes the goal 
> of Subsurface, but it would be nice to have a equipment database where 
> users could store information regarding equipment that they own and use. 
> For instance, we have the possibility to store tanks and dive suits. 
> Could we extend it to include regulators and other equipment? We could 
> then track service dates, combine equipment in kits (lets say, a reg, a 
> dive suit, fins, etc. that are commonly used together?).

Yes. This has been requested by a few people and can even be extended to
include maintenance reminders (especially important for rebreather
divers). So that's definitely something that we should investigate.

Thanks for all the input and help!

/D