New User - My first list of issues

[reefduffer]

Hi Nick,

I bought Macdive a few months ago, converted my database from Divelog, and have now had a chance to upload my and my wife's Suunto Cobras from a recent trip and start the journey to using Macdive going forward. I'm glad to be able to say it's working pretty well, some pluses, some minuses. Here's my first forum post, although I did contact you by email about a different issue back in October.

This post is long, and may come across as overly critical. I'm grateful Macdive exists to pick up the baton that Divelog has apparently dropped. It has the promise to be even better, and in some ways already is. I've bought a family license, and expect I'll be relying on it going forward. But it lacks some features I'd like, and if I don't ask for them as precisely as possible, and without justification, they may never happen.

So here's a list of minor bugs and desired enhancements for your consideration, ordered in their importance to me. I've tried to look over this forum; in a few cases I've seen these or similar mentioned by others. It's possible I'm missing an option that provides what I want in the current code, if so, please correct me.


1) Printing the log (and export to pdf): I'm sure some people, presumably including yourself, want the simulated paper logbook that "print" generates, so what I'm requesting is an alternate format that might be selected through the Macdive preference pane, or as another "print" or "export" choice.

This request is related to the short Macdive forum discussion at
http://www.mac-dive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1102
and my request and use case is strongly related to that of gcool, the OP there. I do not usually take my Mac on dive trips, and never on international trips. I keep a handwritten paper logbook for notes about the dive, signatures, resort stamps etc., and the data I can get by hand from the Cobra's logbook display. You said there you had some kind of report generator or alternate print "on your list", so I'm just reinforcing and helping specify that, for when you get to it.

What I want to "print" from Macdive is primarily the profile and other related information that I can only get from uploading my Cobra and processing the data in a computer program, as a supplement to my logbook. Not a skeuomorphic (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph ) imitation of a paper logbook. And while I value the ability in the live program to view the data multiple ways, and annotate it endlessly, I want to then preserve it in a platform-independent form like a pdf file.

In this alternate form:
- The profile graph should dominate the page, with some scale marks showing depth and time.
(I see prior requests for this wrt the current format as well. More useful if bigger)..
- Alarms should be indicated on the profile, as they are in the "live" profile display. Also listing them in the text part of the page, for clarity, would help. Alarms are one of the most important pieces of dive data to me. It would be reasonable to truncate the list of alarms at say 6 or 10 or so, with a note about that.
- The %02 for Nitrox should be shown! (I see prior requests for thjs).
- Tank size would be useful, either as part of the gear list, or near the SAC computation.
- Occasionally I will enter notes in Macdive explaining something funky in the data, like merging dives, so please print the notes in this alternate format if there are any, but not as 1/3 of every page. Could even be truncated to a few lines.

The request for color in the older post I referenced could add value, and I'd welcome it, but it's not terribly high in my own priorities. The information is.


2) Export to CSV: Please add %O2, and an ordered list of alarms for the dive, as export choices. Alarms can be single-character abbreviations (my preference) or words, as long as they are unambiguous. Again, the alarm list could be truncated at some reasonable number.

I want to generate a compact one line per dive index to print, something like the appearance of the "All Dives" list in the live program, but I want very tight control of format, so rather than pester you with a million little format requests, I'll just parse the .csv and tweak the output until I'm happy. But I would prefer not to have to write a parser for an exported .xml file.


3) Please add %O2 and alarms to the display choices in the Dives list in the live program.

4) Please add a way to automatically sequentially renumber a range of dives. I deleted a 2-minute 6 foot "dive" the Cobra recorded when my wife had to go back for more weight on a dive early in our trip, then had to manually renumber every dive after that. Maybe I missed something already there? Probably grey it out unless "All Dives" is selected.

5) When converting temperatures to Fahrenheit, or pressures to PSI, please round to whole degrees or PSI, at least in all displays. The fractions are distracting as well as meaningless with respect to the dive computer's accuracy, and disagree with the computer's own displays, which are rounded. I note this is done for temperature, but not PSI, in the print/pdf, but for neither in the live display inspector. If you feel the need to preserve the fractional values in xml or csv etc. exports, that's ok.

6) You are reporting High and Low water temperatures. My Cobra records and reports temperatures at beginning and end of the dive, and maximum depth. I would like that information preserved and reported.

7) The "Buddies" field under General and the "Dive Type" in the inspector does (imo) bizarre things if I insert a comma. For example, if for Buddy I type "Ann, Bob & Cathy with us", it gets broken into two tokens and appears as "Bob & Cathy with us Ann" when viewing. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what it does with "Boat, moored, out & back".

Makes it very difficult to repeat the value from a pick list, or record what was intended. I don't know what this was intended to be doing, but it's not my expected or desired behavior. Please, just a simple string. I can understand this tokenization for Tags.

8) There's something odd about the treatment of Computer vs. Gear.Computer. Using my log as an example, there is only one Computer in the Gear section, with a serial #, shown as used on all the dives. However, there are two listed in the left sidebar, "Cobra", used for the dives imported from Divelog, with no serial #, and "Suunto Cobra", used for those uploaded directly to Macdive, with a serial #. The split is reflected in the inspector as well; scrolling through the dives, the "More" tab shows the two flavors of computer, while the "Gear" tab only the one, with serial #, for all dives.

With the dive computer so integral to the core function of Macdive, and Gear tracking presumably being a later extension, I can imagine how such a disconnected view of this special class of Gear can happen. But it looks like some reconciliation of this might be in order. "Gear.Computer" ought to have some connection to "Computer" for a dive, I think, and this is not just a Divelog import issue.

But it gets even weirder. If I start from scratch with a missing ~/Library/.../MacDive.sqlite file and just import the Divelog xml file, then the Gear.Computer is automatically created as "Suunto Cobra" with the correct serial number. But all the dives it's on used on show "Cobra" with no serial # in the inspector "More" tab. As if some part of the program knows the concepts are related, but incompletely.

I've corrected this one-time import disconnect manually within Macdive. Not really my point.

9) The "File" menu seems an odd place for "Delete Selected". I expected it under "Edit". In fact, all four items in that group: "Join", "Duplicate" and the two "Delete"s, seem like they belong under "Edit".

10) Relevant to the issue above about tokenization of "Dive Type", I tried to create a "Smart Divelog" to see if I could work on that, but it's not one of the choices. Then I found "Types". The nomenclature equivalence isn't obvious.

[Jean-Francois]

7) The "Buddies" field under General and the "Dive Type" in the inspector does (imo) bizarre things if I insert a comma. For example, if for Buddy I type "Ann, Bob & Cathy with us", it gets broken into two tokens and appears as "Bob & Cathy with us Ann" when viewing. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what it does with "Boat, moored, out & back".

Makes it very difficult to repeat the value from a pick list, or record what was intended. I don't know what this was intended to be doing, but it's not my expected or desired behavior. Please, just a simple string. I can understand this tokenization for Tags.

I don't know if it helps or not but here is what I do. For buddies, I enter the name and press ENTER, then add the second person's name and press ENTER and so on. The plus is that in the statistic I can see how many dives I did with a certain person.
Same thing goes for Dive Type. For Dive Type I use just a few entries (wreck, Leisure, Club, Training)

I hope it helps.

[nick]

"Bob & Cathy with us" isn't a token, it's more a string. In the token field, you would use "Bob" as one token, and "Cathy" as another, to indicate that Bob and Cathy were on the dive. Try typing "Bob" (without the quotes) and then pressing Enter. Then type "Cathy" and press Enter. You will see tokens for each now. If you are after more of a string-based approach (including your extra context, which seems to imply they were on the dive but not buddies as such), you could perhaps use the Notes area instead.

The comma should split tokens, so what you describe sounds correct. You're just treating it like a text field instead of a token field.

Printing

As I have mentioned, this is on the todo list. Thanks for the feedback, I will keep it all in mind when I get to this.

2) Export to CSV

O2% was removed, from both the CSV export and the main dives list. The reason being: what is O2%? Is it the % from your first tank? Your second? Your rebreather? At which setpoint? Your bailout gas? This information is not just one value, it is more complex than that. For you or I just doing single tank dives it is straightforward. But that's not the case these days with more people doing more technical diving. Initially it displayed the percentage of the first tank, but that caused a lot of confusion.

As for exporting the alarms to CSV (and in a similar fashion, multiple gas mixes), I'm not sure CSV is the best format for that. It is much better suited to XML.

4) Please add a way to automatically sequentially renumber a range of dives.

See Dive Numbering in the help: http://mac-dive.com/help/index.php?title=Dive_Numbering

5) When converting temperatures to Fahrenheit, or pressures to PSI, please round to whole degrees or PSI, at least in all displays.

Sure, I can look at doing that.

6) You are reporting High and Low water temperatures. My Cobra records and reports temperatures at beginning and end of the dive, and maximum depth.

Yes, it does - but your Cobra is not the only device that is supported. I could look at adding this as an extra, as the information can be reasonably approximated from other devices that record temperatures per sample.

8) There's something odd about the treatment of Computer vs. Gear.Computer

I will look in to this.

File menu

I already tidied some of this up for the next update.


Thanks for your feedback.

[nick]

Minor updates:

Indeed, the token field works as expected. Comma finishes the current token (as does Enter). I think the problem here is you're expecting it just to be a normal string, when it's not. As above if you're after something that handles things more like a phrase, the notes area is probably better. Buddies are tokens so stats can be built on them etc.

Dive Computer vs Gear: There was an issue with the Divelog data I was looking at. In some cases a manufacturer is not present, in others it is. This is now defaulted to Suunto if there is no manufacturer, though you said you already fixed this so it's probably not a big deal. Even this probably isn't perfect, but it does what it can. Thankfully it's easy to batch edit the whole lot so not sure it's really a big deal.

I also further tidied up some of the items you suggested should be in edit - some I had already moved but I pushed a couple more in there. Makes a bit more sense.

[reefduffer]

Nick, Sincere thanks for listening, and for your prompt response. A few of these items need a little followup:

"Bob & Cathy with us" isn't a token, it's more a string. In the token field, you would use "Bob" as one token, and "Cathy" as another, to indicate that Bob and Cathy were on the dive. Try typing "Bob" (without the quotes) and then pressing Enter. Then type "Cathy" and press Enter. You will see tokens for each now. If you are after more of a string-based approach (including your extra context, which seems to imply they were on the dive but not buddies as such), you could perhaps use the Notes area instead.

The comma should split tokens, so what you describe sounds correct. You're just treating it like a text field instead of a token field.
[ Followup: ]
Indeed, the token field works as expected. Comma finishes the current token (as does Enter). I think the problem here is you're expecting it just to be a normal string, when it's not. As above if you're after something that handles things more like a phrase, the notes area is probably better. Buddies are tokens so stats can be built on them etc.

I'm at the point where I think I understand the intention. I will start trying to use it; I can see the value. I still want some multi-word tokens, and having comma as a token delimiter in addition to <return> messes that up. I wish it weren't, but I can train myself to use a semicolon or slash and have what I'm intending when creating multiword tokens. OK.

But I have a few issues with the implementation. Maybe I just need a little more training ...

- Why are my tokens being reordered for display? What is the algorithm that governs the display order, and can it be controlled? This would be a lot friendlier if they were displayed in the order I enter them.

- Besides Buddies and Dive Type (and presumably Tags) what fields are tokenized this way? I could go exploring, but I'm then worried about creating autocomplete cruft I can't clean up, and I assume you have a list. DMs? Boat Captains? Weather? ...

- In exploring this, I've now got a bunch of Dive Types that come up in the autocomplete list, some of which were typos or bad ideas. I can't see how to delete them. I see Manage Buddies and Tags, no "Manage Dive Types". If I'm missing how to do this, please advise. If not, this ties in to the previous point; whatever token list sets get created need a control method to delete accumulated cruft. Maybe accessed through a context menu (right click) in the data field?

- A request: It would simplify data entry if I could invoke the entire pick list for a field without having to move to the keyboard to enter a character to invoke autocomplete. For example, Firefox form history does this with doubleclick. Or just have the up/down arrows on all fields that there are on some like General->Certification.

2) Export to CSV
O2% was removed, from both the CSV export and the main dives list. The reason being: what is O2%? Is it the % from your first tank? Your second? Your rebreather? At which setpoint? Your bailout gas? This information is not just one value, it is more complex than that. For you or I just doing single tank dives it is straightforward. But that's not the case these days with more people doing more technical diving. Initially it displayed the percentage of the first tank, but that caused a lot of confusion.

When the meaning is ambiguous, such as a multitank, CCR etc. dive, you could just display "n/a" or "--" or "mult" or " " or something that makes it clear there is no %O2 there. Like what's done with lots of data fields in the inspector when multiple dives are selected.

I understand the attraction of handling the complex cases for advanced divers, and I'm not suggesting you shouldn't. But I'm guessing that's only a small fraction of your users, most of whom rarely or never use more than one OC tank on a given dive, and this is important information for them. And for the tech divers, if they ask for %O2 in a .csv or dive display, they ought to be able to deal with the notation that the data isn't available for a dive, without being confused about why.

As for exporting the alarms to CSV (and in a similar fashion, multiple gas mixes), I'm not sure CSV is the best format for that. It is much better suited to XML.

I agree that XML would be more natural for an open-ended list of alarms, but it's a much bigger project to access the data in that form, so I'm requesting a little stretch. And it's why I suggested it could be truncated; in practice a dive will only have a handful of alarms at most, and so a reasonably bounded list would provide almost all the benefit.

See Dive Numbering in the help: http://mac-dive.com/help/index.php?title=Dive_Numbering

Cool. I had seen that option , but hadn't picked up on the idea of using it to address my problem, because I'm predisposed to not want to renumber older dives going back years. But just renumbering to the same as they were does work, as long as I'm careful, and this renumbering isn't a common requirement. I can imagine scenarios where this breaks down, but I'm unlikely to encounter them, and there's always manual numbering to fall back on, so OK.

Not a question about Macdive per se, But regarding this comment on the link you provided: "And now, by popular demand (yes, I finally gave in..) you can have your dives numbered. ...":

I know there are people who don't log dives, but I expect that there relatively few who do and don't number them. And also not very many Macdive users who don't log dives? Just curious about the mindset that would put all the initiative and effort that you have into writing dive logging software, but be reluctant to provide dive numbering?

[High/low temperature reporting] Yes, it does - but your Cobra is not the only device that is supported. I could look at adding this as an extra, as the information can be reasonably approximated from other devices that record temperatures per sample.

I was actually thinking of Start/End/Bottom where that is captured, and High/Low where you get a profile. I.e., display what's there, not one size fits all. But since you can synthesize Start/End/Bottom from the profile, and it's not wrong in any important sense to synthesize High/Low from Start/End/Bottom, sure, I'd be perfectly happy with just reporting all five temperatures. Probably add some value for the profile guys.

Dive Computer vs Gear: There was an issue with the Divelog data I was looking at. In some cases a manufacturer is not present, in others it is. This is now defaulted to Suunto if there is no manufacturer, though you said you already fixed this so it's probably not a big deal. Even this probably isn't perfect, but it does what it can. Thankfully it's easy to batch edit the whole lot so not sure it's really a big deal.

I agree that the import isn't a big deal, as I said in my OP, once I recognized the discrepancy it was a 1-time fix, and I did use batch edit. Your fixing it is probably worth the trouble, even though Divelog is fading away. What about the serial number missing; is that addressed by the default to Suunto you described?

But also as I said in my OP, the Divelog import wasn't really my point.

There just shouldn't be a case where a Computer is used on a dive, and that same Computer, with the same name, manufacturer and serial number, is not in the Gear list for the dive. Gear.Computer is special, it's not the same as Gear.BC or Gear.Regulator.

I do recognize that there can be more than one Gear.Computer on a dive (thinking most obviously of the Oceanic BUD), but there must be a 1-1 correspondence between Computer and some one instance of Gear.Computer used on a dive. The import issue exposed the fact that there is no such connection, or that it's imperfectly implemented. That's what you might want to consider.

=====
A new question: What does File -> 'New Item' do? I see under the tools menu New [Dive | Gear | Cert ] etc. which all seem clear. What is 'Item'?

[nick]

- In exploring this, I've now got a bunch of Dive Types that come up in the autocomplete list, some of which were typos or bad ideas. I can't see how to delete them. I see Manage Buddies and Tags, no "Manage Dive Types". If I'm missing how to do this, please advise. If not, this ties in to the previous point; whatever token list sets get created need a control method to delete accumulated cruft. Maybe accessed through a context menu (right click) in the data field?

In the next update you can, via the token itself, choose "Delete this type from all dives". So you could put it in and then clean it up.

What about the serial number missing; is that addressed by the default to Suunto you described?

This is fixed for the next update.

A new question: What does File -> 'New Item' do? I see under the tools menu New [Dive | Gear | Cert ] etc. which all seem clear. What is 'Item'?

Creates a new item based on context. Eg a dive if you are in the dives view. A piece of gear if you are in the gear view. This way you can also use the shortcut (command+N) if you want quick access.

Cool. I had seen that option , but hadn't picked up on the idea of using it to address my problem, because I'm predisposed to not want to renumber older dives going back years. But just renumbering to the same as they were does work, as long as I'm careful, and this renumbering isn't a common requirement. I can imagine scenarios where this breaks down, but I'm unlikely to encounter them, and there's always manual numbering to fall back on, so OK.

There is also a Tip in the tips and tricks section of the help that a user sent me. Basically you can create a "fake" computer, by creating a piece of gear and making it a Computer (via Type). You can then add this to just a certain set of dives, and renumber those. This is so you can renumber dives with different computers. It's a little hacky, at some point I will probably just add some right-click context "Renumber dives.." kind of option to the dives, I just haven't gotten around to it. For the most part, renumbering via computer is fine.

I do recognize that there can be more than one Gear.Computer on a dive (thinking most obviously of the Oceanic BUD), but there must be a 1-1 correspondence between Computer and some one instance of Gear.Computer used on a dive.

I use a reefnet sensus ultra on most dives, so the same problem. In fact it's a slightly larger issue, most CCR divers will have multiple computers. I always use at least two, and many others use a backup. So these all end up being two separate dives (if you download them all). I'm planning on revamping all of this. For now, you're right, there's a bit of a disconnect. I'm actually removing the reliance on those fields. They are no longer in the inspector, but will remain in the dives list for compatibility/searching/sorting. In the future, it will just be handled through the gear.

I would prefer to have one "dive" that may have multiple profiles attached to it, from the various computers. Which makes a whole lot of things better. For now, I'm sorry for the inconvenience.


Thanks.