adding more data for people to collect

[Rick Walsh]

On 14 Oct 2014 17:28, "Dirk Hohndel" <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
>
> So far Subsurface has been primarily designed around the idea that it
> would collect the data from a divecomputer, visualize it in a compelling
> way and add a few more items that seemed interesting to the initial
> developers.
>
> Reading through feedback, feature requests and reflecting on conversations
> on IRC it has become clear to me that there are people who want a lot
more.
>
> There's Henrik (and I'm sure others) who want a dive site database.
>
> There are a number of people who wanted a way to track equipment, serial
> numbers, deadlines for service and replacement. We have / had the rather
> sad "in memoriam Jan Schubert" feature request in trac...
>
> There was an interesting discussion about the way we could improve
> tracking of gear that people take on a dive; this started out with a
> conversation about undergarment types and dry suits, but if you really
> want to track the weight of your gear you need to be able to track lights,
> cameras, action (sorry for the Wiggles reference).
>
> So I've been mulling this over for a while, trying to figure out what this
> means for Subsurface.
>
> Here are a few ground rules:
>
> a) this needs to work reasonably seamlessly with older data files
> b) this needs to all be opt-in, i.e. people who don't want to track these
> things shouldn't be bothered by them, they shouldn't clutter the UI, etc
> c) this needs to be done in way that is intuitive and easy to use
>
> Oh wait, we don't have a UI designer driving this. Crud. We so desperately
> need UI designers. It's not even funny.
>
> Having said that, here's what I came up with:
>
> Equipment:
>
> we could take the current Equipment tab and replace 'Weights' with
> 'Equipment' and allow people to track everything that they take on a dive.
> That could be done fairly transparently, even in more or less the same UI
> we have today. I'm a bit worried about the 'weight' property because what
> I /really/ care about is not the weight on land but the relative buoyancy
> under water, but of course even for weights we don't track that (I always
> find it amusing that most people don't get that... a one pound weight does
> NOT add one pound of negative buoyancy...)
>

If only someone could devise a set of units that distinguished between
weight and mass...

Even in metric countries where we should know better, we're just as
confused.  Having said that, do you really care that 12 lb mass of lead has
a buoyant weight of 11 lb?

The mass vs buoyant weight difference does become significant with less
dense equipment, such as fins and lights.

> Then we could add a new screen (new window, new... something... where's
> that UI designer?) where we allow people to track additional data for each
> 'equipment' that is ever mentioned in a dive (so the same auto-completer
> idea). We then add a number of columns. make, model, serial#, purchase
> date, next service date, weight (see above)... what else is missing?
>
> We then need a reminder function for the service date... no idea... Google
> calendar integration? Suggestions?
>
> And of course we need to store all this. That would likely be an equipment
> section after the settings section in the XML file (and equivalent in
> git).
>
>
> Dive sites:
>
> I would strongly want us to keep the current free form Location field.
> We could then have some super-imposed structure in a dive site UI (did I
> mention that we need a UI designer?). Something like
> <site>, <city>, <coutry>
> I'm actually struggling here a bit. I really really want to keep this
> entirely optional for people like myself (he...) and at the same time make
> it useful for those who like more structure... so how could this be done
> so that existing data can be parsed and then the dive sites database can
> connect bidirectionally to the location field?
> Anyway, the UI would include address, GPS (from the Info tab), additional
> fields (Henrik?)
> All this could then also be saved in yet another section in the XML / git.
>

I have no idea how or if it would work, but could the Marble libs be used
to determine country/state/province of sites based on lat/long coordinates?
Whether this is stored separately or calculated on the fly is another
question.  It would avoid having to impose a structure on the location text.

>
> What do people think? Has the German water poisoned my brain? Am I
> completely off in lala land? Or is this maybe something we should pursue?
>
> /D
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