Wishlist / Bug reports

[probe1]

Hi nick

I started diving this year, and just purchased MacDive.
Although I don't have my own diving computer yet, I still enjoy a lot to be able to keep a log of my previous dives, and I love features such as photo import, statistics and graphs, GPS localisation of dive sites ... So thanks a lot for your work !
There are a few things that I'd love to see appear in future updates, so here are my 2 cents :

- Dive number column in the "All Dives" view (I read that you're going to implement dives number in the next update).
- Contextual menu with choice of country flag when creating a new site, just so that we don't modify the flag resource in the contents of the MacDive.app !
- Photo folder / iPhoto event or album importation that keeps photo order (currently it seems to import them randomly, and it's quite a long task to re-order hundreds of photos manually).
- Ability to import and play movies as well as photos (.mov, .avi, etc ...) !
- Coverflow style photos display in the profile data section of the "All Dives" view (maybe with a tab for choosing to display site main photo, dive photos, or notes). Because as I don't have any diving computer yet and hence no profile data, my photos don't appear there. And it's a bit annoying to go to the edit / info window to be able to watch them ...

There are a couple of strange behavior I also wanted to report :

When editing a dive's date and time while dives are sorted by descending order in the "All Dives" view, the dive doesn't seem to update to its new position by itself and stays at the top of the column. I have to click twice on "Date" to re-sort the list, and only then it updates its position. Not a big deal, but worth noticing ...
Also, when I try to import photos, with the "Store images instead of paths" option on, the database grows much bigger than the actual photo size, (as you mentioned somewhere else), but when deleting them from a dive, the database doesn't go back to its initial size. Not a big deal either, I now link them to my iPhoto library (again, link to iPhoto events or albums, and order of photos preserved would be top notch), since a 1.2 Gb database slows the app too much
I'm sorry if these bugs have already been reported, not my intention to make a redundant post ...

There, I leave it to you, but thanks in advance and keep up the good work !

[nick]

- Dive number column in the "All Dives" view (I read that you're going to implement dives number in the next update).

This is in the latest version, but autonumbering is based on dive computer. You can edit the column manually though.

- Contextual menu with choice of country flag when creating a new site, just so that we don't modify the flag resource in the contents of the MacDive.app !

Yeah I'm working on something to deal with this.

- Photo folder / iPhoto event or album importation that keeps photo order (currently it seems to import them randomly, and it's quite a long task to re-order hundreds of photos manually).
- Ability to import and play movies as well as photos (.mov, .avi, etc ...) !
- Coverflow style photos display in the profile data section of the "All Dives" view (maybe with a tab for choosing to display site main photo, dive photos, or notes). Because as I don't have any diving computer yet and hence no profile data, my photos don't appear there. And it's a bit annoying to go to the edit / info window to be able to watch them ...

I will have a good look at photos/movies at some point and try to make some improvements.

Also, when I try to import photos, with the "Store images instead of paths" option on, the database grows much bigger than the actual photo size, (as you mentioned somewhere else), but when deleting them from a dive, the database doesn't go back to its initial size. Not a big deal either, I now link them to my iPhoto library (again, link to iPhoto events or albums, and order of photos preserved would be top notch), since a 1.2 Gb database slows the app too much
I'm sorry if these bugs have already been reported, not my intention to make a redundant post ...

There was a particularly nasty bug where deleting an image wouldn't actually delete it. That's fixed in 2.0.3, and any bogus images should have been removed when you upgraded from 2.0.2. Let me know if it's still a problem.

They should also be smaller now, as the way they are stored is improved.

Ultimately, using the path is still better. I may have to make a change so that the files are not stored in the database, but copied into the application support folder. It makes it really difficult to debug problems when the database grows so large (and it's also much slower). I had a guy upload a 1.9 GB file to his DropBox for me to diagnose a problem the other day. Without images, the file was 3.2MB and compressed to even less.

[nick]

And while I'm at it..

[probe1]

Thanks for your reply

The dive number column and certifications are nice additions, so thanks for listening to user feedbacks !
And it's good to know you fixed the database size with photo import, even if I now import paths only.
But the absolute killer is this coverflow presentation teaser ! I can see you replaced the "View as icons" button in the toolbar with a coverflow button, so is it safe to assume that it will also be available in the "Sites" and "Certifications" views ?

Anyway, being able to view photos in the main view without having any CPU data will be a great feature for users like me.
I can't wait to check it out ... Thanks again for your work !

[nick]

The dive number column and certifications are nice additions, so thanks for listening to user feedbacks !
And it's good to know you fixed the database size with photo import, even if I now import paths only.

This is a better way to do it. I regret adding that option at all.

But the absolute killer is this coverflow presentation teaser ! I can see you replaced the "View as icons" button in the toolbar with a coverflow button, so is it safe to assume that it will also be available in the "Sites" and "Certifications" views ?

Wow, good eye But sorry, nope - when you swap to the dives view, the thumbnails icon is replaced with the coverflow icon. It changes back when you go back to sites/certifications/gear etc.

[probe1]

Haha it's all good, it's already nice to check where you're at in real time !

[probe1]

Just downloaded the 2.0.4 update, as I reinstalled my system to a bigger hard drive, and the coverflow photo display is fantastic, so thanks a lot !
I also like the little flags in the "Sites" view
A few issues I wanted to let you know about :

- I lost my flags for edited country names, so I had to do the "Show package content" trick again to recover them. It's not very important but there surely is a softer way to achieve this ...

- The "Sites" view doesn't seem to save all the sorting preferences when quiting. For example, when I sort my sites by Rating (Asc or Desc), it stays the same on the next launch. But when I sort them by Country (Asc or Desc), the next launch they are still sorted by country, but totally randomly (like France, then République Dominicaine, then Égypte ...)

- When I installed MacDive to my new drive, I copied its preference file and Application Support folder, and of course I lost all my photos because of their previous path. But when I imported them again, they were not in the correct order, although they have time tags ... So I had to go through the time consuming task of manually move them by hand one at a time, constantly checking their correct order in iPhoto as I made my way through all the dives. Would it be possible to implement a sorting option in the Photos tab of the Information window ?

Apart from that, this is a great update. It's so nice to see that this app improves with new features and still launches blazingly fast !

[nick]

- I lost my flags for edited country names, so I had to do the "Show package content" trick again to recover them. It's not very important but there surely is a softer way to achieve this ...

Anything you manually change after showing package contents will be lost - the whole package is replaced upon update.

- The "Sites" view doesn't seem to save all the sorting preferences when quiting. For example, when I sort my sites by Rating (Asc or Desc), it stays the same on the next launch. But when I sort them by Country (Asc or Desc), the next launch they are still sorted by country, but totally randomly (like France, then République Dominicaine, then Égypte ...)

Can you send me your MacDive.sqlite file? It may be that the special characters are confusing the sort.

- When I installed MacDive to my new drive, I copied its preference file and Application Support folder, and of course I lost all my photos because of their previous path. But when I imported them again, they were not in the correct order, although they have time tags ... So I had to go through the time consuming task of manually move them by hand one at a time, constantly checking their correct order in iPhoto as I made my way through all the dives. Would it be possible to implement a sorting option in the Photos tab of the Information window ?

The reason is that when you first add photos, there is no order. You will notice if you restart macdive after adding them, the order will change again. Order is only saved once you move one photo - after this, they are all given a position and will remain in that order.

Of course the ones on the profile graph itself will always be displayed in the correct location.