Can't choose divesite properly despite beta-upgrade, refund?

[drmarkle]

I am very frustrated with this software. 1st it was the certificates and now it is labeling dive sites. When you enter a new site it overwrites data from other sites thereby necessitating a revision of earlier entries. It is a great round robin. Fix one, screw up the next. I had the same problems with the certificates. It wouldn't allow entry of both the front and back sides of the cards without overwriting all the others. Although this software recognizes my atomic cobalt where others don't, all these problems lead me to recommend avoiding this software until it has some of these major problems worked out. If a refund is possible, I am for it. I'll go back to manually entering my dives in my Sunto D9 software. Although I can't directly hook my dive computer to it, at least when I enter the data it stays entered and accurate.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I am not accustom to purchasing something with so many bugs to address. Freeware maybe but not $40.00 (multi computer license) for me to tell you what's wrong with your program and wait for a fix!

Gravely disappointed,
drmarkle@cox.net

[nick]

Hi,

I apologise for your frustrations. I'm not aware of any current issues with sites - I would be happy to address the problem if you could provide me a more detailed explanation and some steps to reproduce it?

The previous update to MacDive was massive. I'll point out that this was a free update for all users, involving months of development time. MacDive regularly receives free updates that provide new features - for one (in this update), brand new gas management to support multiple tanks. For a previous one, a complete iOS syncing solution. These are, again, free. I don't charge extra for them, I spend a very large amount of time adding them for everyones benefit. And yeah, sometimes a few bugs make it through, even after a bunch of beta testing from users. For all of these, a new beta was available within hours of the problems being reported and available to download.

It is complex software, and the odd bug is an unfortunate reality. Your certification issue was reported and immediately fixed, with a beta provided. It will be in a new official update that addresses shortly. While I appreciate you want things to just work, would you prefer that MacDive was 100% stable but had no free updates with new features?

You're also using a Beta version, which is expected to have issues - that's the point of it! Unfortunately it's also the beta that contains a fix to the certs issue. I could provide you a new version that fixes the issue without the in-progress beta work on sites, if you would prefer.

Either way, I'm happy to just provide you a refund. Please email me with your order id and I will do so immediately. I would also appreciate a detailed description of your site problem if possible, so I can fix the issue for other users.

[nick]

When you enter a new site it overwrites data from other sites thereby necessitating a revision of earlier entries. It is a great round robin. Fix one, screw up the next.

Actually, just thinking about this, and I wonder:

Do you mean you have the Dive Inspector open, you type in a site, and click "Create New". Then you swap to another dive, and it has the same country/location/site in there? And when you swap back, they don't change?

This is actually correct - it's not showing you what site the dive has set, it is just a shortcut to quickly creating a new site. The drop down combo box above should be set to the correct site, and that's how it should be. So indeed, when you click next/previous the three text boxes won't change. The purpose of this is so that when you go on a dive trip, get back, and are filling out multiple fields, the country and site don't change so you can quickly type a site, click create, then move on to the next dive. Does that make sense?

Apologies if this isn't the case (and again I would be interested in more details), but I do understand how this looks very similar to the certifications issue you were seeing, that actually was an issue. It's just that in this case, it's supposed to be like that to allow you to enter sites at the same location quickly - rather than having to create those ahead of time in Sites and then choose them from the dropdown.

Let me know if that explains what you are seeing?

[drmarkle]

Nick,
Thank you for your prompt reply. I apologize for my somewhat rude post. I am currently in the midst of a trip to Fiji and bought the software last minute in an effort to make logging the numerous dives we are making easy. As everything was last minute, I didn't have a chance to experiment with your free-ware version first. I certainly do appreciate all the bells and whistles you are attempting to perfect and the fact that your upgrades are all free.

Never-the-less, I am struggling to get the software to work as intended.

Specifically, when entering new dive sites, it does overwrite the several other dives that were downloaded from the current session. Each new entry overwrites the same dives downloaded at the same session. If I download Taveuni Island, the White Wall for my first dive and for my 2nd a new Island and new site, it overwrites all the previous dives from that download.

Although the fix on the certifications improved things it remains imperfect with erratic failures to save the backside of a card or overwriting the front of the card with the backside when entered. It is much more reliable than the first build but still seems to have bugs.

If you can get these issues resolved I am happy to pay the fee. I certainly believe in monetarily supporting freeware to ensure it's preservation. When you donate to freeware, however, you do so based on your pleasure with the product. In this case, I purchased the product without any experience with it recognizing the value in getting the atomic cobalt to interface with my computer. My expectations were a little different.

Thanks for your efforts to tweak the program into shape and your willingness to work with us as you do so.

Ken
drmarkle@cox.net

[nick]

Specifically, when entering new dive sites, it does overwrite the several other dives that were downloaded from the current session. Each new entry overwrites the same dives downloaded at the same session. If I download Taveuni Island, the White Wall for my first dive and for my 2nd a new Island and new site, it overwrites all the previous dives from that download.

How are you entering the dive sites? Can you walk me through the steps? It sounds like what I explained above is what you are seeing, so let me try and clarify that a little. Say I'm on a dive trip, in Fiji.

I get home from the day. Download dives. Now I have say two dives, which both have Unknown Country, Unknown Location, Unknown Site as their dive site.

I open the dive inspector. Swap to the General tab, and at the bottom are three boxes - country, location, site. If you just launched MacDive, then these three boxes are all empty. So I type Fiji in the country box, Tavenui in the location box, and White Wall for the site. I click "Create New".

Now, notice the long dropdown box just above changes from "Unknown Country, Unknown Location, Unknown Site", to "Fiji, Tavenui, White Wall". With me so far? Clicking create reads those boxes, creates the new Site behind the scenes, and assigns it to the dive. That's it - the boxes do not reflect what is set for the dive. They are only a shortcut to quickly creating a site and assigning it to the currently selected dive(s).

Now, I click "next" to go to the next dive.

Notice that the dropdown box changes back to "Unknown Country, Unknown Location, Unknown Site", since it doesn't have a dive. But the three boxes still say Fiji for country, Tavenui for location, and White Wall for site. They don't change when you swap dives. This is cool - this saves us typing Fiji again, and Tavenui again (given this dive was done at the same island of course).

So I just change the site to "Another Site", and click Create New. Now notice the dropdown box says "Fiji, Tavenui, Another Site". So we've created the new site, and it has been assigned to this dive.

Now, basically, you're done with the sites for those two dives. So you click "Previous" to go back to the first dive. Notice the Country, Location and Site boxes still say Fiji, Tavenui, Another Site (the site you just created) - because they're just a shortcut for adding a new site quickly. But notice the dropdown box indeed has the correct site you assigned to this dive, "Fiji, Tavenui, White Wall".

So the point, really, is that the dropdown box is what site is selected for a dive. Those three text boxes, are not. They have nothing to do with the current dive, and will not change unless you change them or restart the app.

Does that make sense? Does it explain what you are seeing?

If not, I apologise for being dense, but it would be great if you could provide me with a similar description of how you are adding sites and what you are seeing wrong (ie specifically where you are creating the site, and how you are assigning it, what dive(s) you have selected at the time, maybe even a bunch of quick screenshots if you can be bothered, etc etc).

I spent quite some time last night playing around just adding/editing sites and I failed to find any issues, so any guidance you can give me as to how to replicate your problem would be great.

(If this is the case, which I hope it is, then it brings up the issue that maybe this isn't the best user interface design. For some background, I actually added this as a shortcut for myself while I was away on a dive trip - I found it significantly easier to quickly go through and add the right sites after a day of diving. The alternative was to manually go and create 2-4 sites a day in Sites, and then go back to dives and choose them from a big dropdown. This ended up being frustrating, and being able to quickly just change the site name, possibly location, and click Create saved a bunch of time and streamlined my workflow).

Although the fix on the certifications improved things it remains imperfect with erratic failures to save the backside of a card or overwriting the front of the card with the backside when entered. It is much more reliable than the first build but still seems to have bugs.

I will have to address this - I wasn't aware of any further issues, and have had no other reports of problems. So I'll take a look and see if I can spot what is going wrong for you. Are there any patterns or steps you can take to reproduce a problem? Certain images you are trying to add? Anything that you can think of that causes an issue?

I'll take a look tonight, at any rate.