RFC: Re-organising the Information tab in Subsurface

[Dirk Hohndel]

I really hope that some more people will join this conversation... I encouraged Willem to send this out instead of spending a ton of time on implementing this before receiving feedback...

> On Jul 28, 2019, at 11:35 PM, Willem Ferguson <willemferguson at zoology.up.ac.za> wrote:
> 
> Following previous discussion about this, I am posting a more formal request for comments. My proposal is to reorganise the items in the current Information tab as in the attached two images. There are two issues: 1) physical arrangement of data items on the tab; 2) the style used for presenting the re-organised data items.
> 
> 1) Physical arrangement of data items on the tab.
> 
> Currently the presentation of the Information tab is highly inefficient, utilising large areas of screen space for relatively little information. In addition the data are currently presented in a rather unorganised way. The items are now organised under three headings: Dive, Gas and Environment and the presentation is more space-conscious. There are a few points worth noting:
> 
> a) The date and time of the dive is removed from the tab. This is because, when viewing the Information tab, the date and time of the dive is already highlighted on the dive list. It is not necessary to indicate dive identifiers (date,time) on any of the tabs because the tabs always represent aspects of the selected dive(s). Adding date and time also causes the Dive items not to fit in a single row any more.
> 
> b) For the moment, the dive mode is included in the Information tab. This follows previous discussions where a sentiment was expressed that dive mode is a technical aspect which does not really concern recreational divers that represent the majority of users of the software. I personally would love it to remain where it is on the Notes tab, but one may need to consider the overall utility of the software which may override personal preferences.
> 
> c) It is anticipated that, in future, more information will be included under the Environmental data in this tab, but that is not at stake at the moment.
> 

I'm happy with that grouping. Moving elements from the Notes tab is a good thing, I think. But I'd love to hear if others have strong feelings about this.
The logical structure that you propose seems to make sense.

> 2) Style used for presenting data. 
> 1) Justification: The current headings are left-justified while the data are centred within each container. In some circumstances when the information tab is relatively wide, the data are therefore separated from the headings, making the display difficult to read (see the attached image "Present_setup"). I propose that the headings and data are aligned similarly. To illustrate these differences in the attached images, the top row shows left-justified headings and data, while the other rows have centred headings and data.
> 

I am pretty sure that we argued about this in the past, but searching through my archive doesn't seem to bring the most relevant threads back for quoting. We had issues around consistency and some odd cases, but from what you show here this seems to look ok.

> 2) Heading colour: The headings are blue while the data are in black. This makes it easy to discern what is a heading and what is the associated datum.
> 

I like that

> 3) Framing the boxes: In the attached image "Info2.jpg" each data item is framed in blue, the same colour as the heading. The rationale is that, for each box, the container is clearly separated from the information (in black) shown within the box. The attached image "Info1.jpg" does not have framing. However, in this case note that there is a problem with the background colour being split behind each heading. This is especially visible with darker background colours within each container.

That's much more tricky because on the different platforms things already look rather different - because we follow the native styles to some extend.

So here is a similar section of the Information tab on Windows, Fedora, Mac:






I often thought that I would want the UI to look more consistent (and to waste less space), but I never managed to actually work on that.
Long story short, yes, I'm open to something along the lines of what you've shown - but I'm not sure how well this would play e.g. on a Mac.

/D
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