GSoC 2015 - Introduction

Tue Mar 24 14:05:35 PDT 2015

Hi Martin,

2015-03-23 6:14 GMT-03:00 Long, Martin <martin at longhome.co.uk>:

> 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.
>
>
*MANY* thanks for your powerful explanation. =D

>
>>
>> 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.
>

I have many ideas about how it should looks like and work... I'm doing some
mockups and I will let you see it soon.

I'm thinking about structures where users could add or/and group things by
a simple "drag and drop"

- we could have a view or dialog with all equipments
- users would be able to 'drag and drop' items from this view/dialog to the
equipment tab
- I think it's important to have pre-defined categories - easier to find
items
- It would be nice if each category had a thumbnail - it could be
configurable (eg. allow users to add a picture to a specific equipment,
otherwise just use a default img of the corresponding category)
- equipment tab : instead of showing a detailed list, we could show a kind
of thumbnails list with very basic info (name + manufacturer + number of
uses) - tooltip->more info - double click->dialog with details
...
...

I'm not sure if it's clear enough, but please let me know if you
like/dislike any of these ideas =D

All the best,
Marcos

>
>
>
>> -----
>>
>> 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
>
>
>
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