GSoC 2015 - Introduction

[Long, Martin]

Hi Marcos,

*- Asset Management*
>
> The main concept of this project is very clear[2], but as I'm not a diver,
> I really appreciate your help to better understand all the details expected
> for this project. In this way I would have more knowledge to think about
> the data structure.
>
> Do you recommend any specific documentation/software which would give me
> ideas about what would be expected from the user point of view (I mean,
> assets)?
>

I think this is made up of 2 parts, which are very closely linked.
"Inventory management", and  "Equipment used on a dive".

I think the best place to start with this is to look at the equipment tab
for the dive. This currently allows the diver to record and track the use
of 2 pieces of equipment used on dives. 1) Cylinders and 2) Weights.
Weights are simply recorded, cylinders can also used for gas changes, which
forms part of various calculations (this is for advanced tech diving where
different gas mixes are used for different portions of the dive). The only
other item of equipment which is discretely tracked is 'suit' which is on
the "Dive notes" tab.

Lots of divers also like to track other pieces of equipment - they might
like to look back when was the last time they used split fins, or what
thickness hood did they use on that ice dive last year. We simply want to
be able to be able to track all of the equipment we used on a dive.

Now, for many dives, divers will use exactly the same set of equipment. You
find the thing that works well for you, and stick with it. The diver
doesn't want to have to log 20 pieces of equipment for each dive, when they
are almost always the same. This is where equipment 'groups' come into
play.

I diver might have a set of gear which he typically uses in cold water. A
drysuit, fins which fit over drysuit boots, maybe twin cylinders, a heavier
set of weights to account for the bulk, a 7mm hood, gloves, etc.

That same diver, when travelling to the Red Sea, might use a completely
different set of gear. A 3:2mm shorty wetsuit, full foot fins, hired 12l
single cylinder, no gloves/hood.

An advanced user might want to split this down further, depending on
different combinations of usage. They might have 2 different groups of
'breathing gear' (eg Open circuit gear, AP Rebreather), and 2 groups of
'climate gear' (UK Cold water, Tropical). So it should be possible to
select more than one equipment group for a single dive (e.g.  AP Rebreather
+ UK Cold water).

As well as being able to select multiple groups, it should also be possible
to select additional individual pieces of equipment, which might be
occasionally taken on dives, depending on circumstances, and finally once
equipment sets have been selected for a dive, a diver might want to change
specific pieces of equipment for a single dive only. So maybe the diver has
selected "UK Cold water" set, but on that dive actually decided to try out
a different set of fins... it should be possible to edit the individual
pieces for that dive, and only that dive.

This last point is an interesting one, implementation wise. You might find
that the groups are only used to build the equipment profile for a dive,
and are not stored as part of that dive. Equipment groups will change over
time... switching a piece of equipment in a group should only affect new
dives logged, and all previous dives should remember exactly what equipment
was used at the time.

I hope that gives some of the inspiration for this project. I think if you
have any further questions relating to the 'diver' perspective of this
functionality, just ask away.



>
> Would you expect to have the data being stored in the same log file (xml)?
>

Absolutely. You probably want to be looking at 2 places to store data in
the file. 1) At root level, which stores the diver's current inventory, and
equipment groupings. 2) Equipment used on each dive, stored along with the
data for that dive.


>
> Do you expect to have it placed as a new view or a new dialog?
>

I'd like to see proposals for this. For the per-dive data, I think the
"Equipment" tab is probably the right place for this to live.  For the
inventory management, I imagine a separate dialog, opened from the pull
down menu, would be consistent with the way things work. Again, I'd like to
see proposals, and maybe other users have some input on this.



> -----
>
> Any of these projects have a higher priority?
> I think that the answer for this one will be 'NO' - but, as I'm
> considering these two projects, it would be awesome to hear from the
> community which one would make more people happy! =D
>

I'm not a real evangelist for user testing, and I'm primarily a user rather
than a developer, so I'd be much happier to see real functionality over
better test coverage. However, I'm sure opinions would differ on this.
<http://lists.subsurface-divelog.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/subsurface>
Cheers

Martin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.subsurface-divelog.org/pipermail/subsurface/attachments/20150323/ff07c57c/attachment.html>