Subsurface Dive list table

[Davide DB]

I promise I will stop spamming the list.
After this Dirk will reply to me all uppercase :)

Sorry for the HTML email but sometimes it's  useful.
Several friends of mine using Win Subsurface said me that it has a somewhat
naive UI. At the beginning I was not able to understand what exactly means
and what are differencies (if any) respect other Windows applications.
In my spare time I dug MS guidelines on Windows UI and I found a couple of
things.

MS calls tables List Views.

The strange things about Subsurface dive list are:

- Column headings
- Font size

Let's see these two aspects:

*Column Heading*

According to MS, (
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn742408.aspx )

column headings (Heading labels) must follow these rules:

Heading labels

   - Keep the heading labels brief (three words or fewer).
   - Use a single noun or noun phrase with no ending punctuation.
   - Use sentence-style capitalization
   <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn688965.aspx#glossary-s>
   .
   - Align the heading the same way as the data.

Hence Subsurface's dive list table has just two columns that fail to
comply: "m" and "star".
Actually, current column headings should be ok:

are designed to be short and useful (as they provide the unit of the value
> in the column in this case).


http://trac.hohndel.org/ticket/566#comment:4

Respect to Subsurface 4.1, the new 4.2 align heading the same as the data
and the runtime/duration column has be renamed from "min" to "Mins". Better
than before but still Mins doesn't mean anything. Moreover on long dives >
1 h, time is expressed as 1:05:23, one hour... So literally they aren't
minutes :)
This is a screen grab from my logbook:


[image: Immagine in linea 1]


We all know what the first column "#" means but it's a U.S. customary. From
Wikipedia:

Number sign is a name for the symbol #, which is used for a variety of
> purposes, including (mainly in the United States) the designation of a
> number (for example, "#1" stands for "number one"). In recent years, it has
> been used for "hashtagging" on social media websites.


Would be nice finding a correct number sign localization or something else.
An Italian man does not understand # at all. In Italian language it would
be "n°"


*Font size*

On Windows, Subsurface installs by default with the Calibri font. This
gives immediately a naive looking UI to the Windows Average Joe user like
me and my dive buddies.

Setting the correct Segoe UI font, size 9 pt. (Or the XP legacy Tahoma
font) restore the typical Windows UI appearance with a small quirk: Again,
for space reasons the dive list table has hard-coded a font 1 pt smaller
than the size set in the preference dialog.
Reading the immense and boring Windows font and text guidelines:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn742483.aspx

They states:

Segoe UI is optimized for ClearType, which is on by default in Windows.
> With ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is an elegant, readable font. Without
> ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is only marginally acceptable. This factor
> determines when you should use Segoe UI.
> Segoe UI includes Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic characters. There are
> new fonts, also optimized for ClearType, created for other character sets
> and uses. These include Meiryo for Japanese, Malgun Gothic for Korean,
> Microsoft JhengHei for Chinese (Traditional), Microsoft YaHei for Chinese
> (Simplified), Gisha for Hebrew, and Leelawadee for Thai, and the ClearType
> Collection fonts designed for document use.



And most importantly:


*For Segoe UI, use a 9 point font size or larger*. The Segoe UI font is
> optimized for these sizes, so avoid using smaller sizes.


SO with 8pt Windows Cleartype strives to render correctly this font and
sometimes it seems blurred.

Now, regarding the space problem correctly reported by Dirk, I see that
Diving Log 5, with the same fields and a bigger font, occupies 2/3 of
Subsurface's horizontal space. BTW I'm not a font expert but I guess it
uses the old XP legacy font called Tahoma, now substituted by Segoe UI.
It's worth to note it uses the same "#" numbering symbol as well.

This is a test on part of my logbook on my old laptop with a undermost
screen resolution of 1280*1024.
They are the same dives but in reverse order because DL5 do not permits to
sort them. BTW It failed to import correctly my runtimes :)

As you see it uses correct column heading wording and it saves a lot of
space too!



[image: Immagine in linea 2]

One of main culprit here is the date format. We use a fair verbose format
and we use seconds!!!
I remember Linus, lately,  mentioned date format being too verbose for
printing. I guess we could choose a compromise. I like seeing immediately I
dove on Monday or Saturday so we could use something like "Sat 13/04/14
11:22"

Regarding column headings on the other fields I would propose:

N°
Date
Rating
Max Depth (m)
Dive Time (min)
Location

I prefer having measure units on heading than on every cell. We could use
two row to save horizontal space.
I understand that all these strings must be localized and maybe in some
language they could be longer than my example but I think that the
application will gain usability and nicer appearance. After all are small
details that make things great.

Bye

-- 
Davide
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