mobile version testing

[Dirk Hohndel]

> On Jan 19, 2021, at 11:21 AM, Willem Ferguson via subsurface <subsurface at subsurface-divelog.org> wrote:
> The obvious question that I have been asking since the Statistics were ported to mobile. The mobile code needs a filter. Probably a question that Berthold and Dirk would hate because of the effort that would be required.

I don't think anyone can accuse Berthold (or myself) of shying away from 'effort'.

The problem is that the mobile app is used by people on 4.4in screens on tiny, ancient phones, and on 12.9in screens on current iPad pros that have more processing power than most laptops from a couple of years ago running iOS 14.x.
And anything in between.
And designing a user interface that reasonably straddles that range is really hard. And the sum total of people actively working on the QML user interface can relatively cleanly be rounded to ONE.
Me.
And the sum total of people with even remotely credible UI design skills that are currently actively involved in this project is ZERO point ZERO ZERO ZERO.

I'm thrilled to see a PR from Doug, and hopeful that he'll do more. I know that you and Berthold and others have included the occasional QML change here and there.

But realistically it's me. And with every single change we run into "oh, user XYZ on device ABC can create this situation where things look wrong / crash / whatever".
And I will spend hours and days and weeks trying to fix it.
And then the updated version creates three more such reports.

Of the last ten bugs reported for the mobile app I was able to reproduce 6. The other four I am trying to fight blind.

So, you wonder... do I feel like porting the filter capability to mobile? 
Knowing that the second person to play with it will say "on my 4.7in Android device running Android 6.1 with a highly invasive theming component that makes our fonts look wrong, I can't access the second drop down".
Oh, just this week I got TWO annoyed emails why we no longer support Android 4.4.

Yeah, I'm totally into that. I can't wait, honestly.

I have quite literally a dozen things on my todo list for the mobile app - all bug fixes.
And I have NO idea when I'll do that.
Occasionally I feel excited and add a new feature and this is all fun and I feel hopeful. Like with the stuff that we are discussing here right now... the new editing. the new statistics.
And then we re-enter the real world and I realize that debugging QML code is such an insane amount of pain. And having to recreate new test builds, submitting them to the stores, having them tested and failing and I ask myself "why am I doing this again?"

Anyway. Time to up the dosage of my depression meds, I guess

/D

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