Adding dives manually idiots guide

[frogger]

Having decided to finally digitise my divelog I need to add something in the order of 200 dives in manually. Is there an easy way or a wizard to help with manual dive creation? Or even another tool that will allow me to do it and then import it into MacDive?

If not, is there an idiots guide on how to do it manually (the easiest way)? Do I have to create my dive sites first and then create the dives?

And another question - where do I manually add the maximum depth?

Thanks in advance

[nick]

There's no real easy way in macdive to bulk add manual dives, unfortunately.

The best alternative is to find something that will output UDCF files (or write them yourself) and import those. Do you have any of your dive data in a digital format at all?

[frogger]

Sadly no. Is there a template UDCF file somewhere I can get a copy of? Are UDCF files one per dive or is it one large file with a bunch of fields? Or is there a Excel/Numbers template file somewhere that can be converted to UDCF?

[nick]

It's XML. The UDCF spec is here:

http://www.streit.cc/dive/index.html

And if you search around the forum, there is a couple of attached sample files.

[frogger]

I have had a look around and read the specification but I seem to be missing some info. The only fields I want are the following:
Dive Number
Date
Site
Depth
DIve Time
Notes

This is what I think I need but as I said I think I am missing dive time and notes and don't know the strings for them:

<PROFILE UDCF="1">
<UNITS>Metric</UNITS>
<ADDINFO>
<PERSINFO>My Name</PERSINFO>
</ADDINFO>

<DIVE>
<DATE><DAY>27</DAY><MONTH>10</MONTH><YEAR>1994</YEAR></DATE>
<TIME><HOUR>10</HOUR><MINUTE>30</MINUTE></TIME>
<SAMPLES>
<d>9</d>
<t>25.0</t>
</SAMPLES>
</DIVE>

<DIVE>
<DATE><DAY>27</DAY><MONTH>10</MONTH><YEAR>1994</YEAR></DATE>
<TIME><HOUR>13</HOUR><MINUTE>00</MINUTE></TIME>
<SAMPLES>
<d>9</d>
<t>25.0</t>
</SAMPLES>
</DIVE>

</PROFILE>

[nick]

Ahh.. duration is actually based on the number of samples. Notes, I'm not sure if it has a field for that.

The oceanic .txt files are quite simple, but don't have notes or location. I think Suunto Dive Manager files might have everything you need, but they're different from UDCF (still XML, just different).

Do you have your dives in a digital format (excel, text, something) ?

If so, drop me an email with a sample.