MacDive Forums

Please tell me if I'm missing something and some of that is already feasible.

I use MD on my iphone, ipad and MacBook. All sync'ed through cloud. (typical).

As I add a new dive and add buddies to it, I find that the same buddy has multiple entries, sometimes spelled the same, sometimes not. E.g. when typoing "C" I'm presented with C Dupont, Chuck Dupont, Chuck Dupont (yep, same spelling), Chuck Dupond. When I search (through a Smart Divelog) I can only type a string of characters, I'm not presented with suggestions. So I have to remember the many different ways I spelled my buddy's name over time, and I have to create a new conditional clause for each spelling with a "Any" operand. Very cumbersome.

• I wish I could easily fix/change the spelling of a buddy's name, without accidentaly creating a duplicate

• I wish I could easily clean up my dives vs buddies associations and ensure Chuck is Chuck and there's not 5 variations of it.

• I wish I could easily search for all the dives I did with Chuck and trust I'm not missing any, just because some are linked to Charles (a variation of Chuck, but the same buddy nonetheless).

• I wish I could manage my buddies through a structured list, the same way I can manage the sites (with the nuances that apply, of course). There could be some MacDive specific attributes to buddies, like "level", "certs", ..., "Mac Contacts entry", and then inherit all the attributes from the Mac Contacts entry.

• I wish I could search my list of buddies based on some criteria (I want to organize a CCR dive next Sunday, so I want to search all my CCR buddies).

• I wish I could email all buddies in a list at once (using email address in their Mac Contacts record, so I can invite them all at once to this cool CCR dive Sunday)

• ...

The easiest way to clean up the variations.

On your mac you could:

1. Create a smart log with all your variation.
2. Select all dives.
3. Inspect the selected dives (cmd + i)
4. Change the buddies to the preferred spelling.

This assumes there are no other buddies on the selected dives. Otherwise you would need to only select dives with the same buddies.

Contacts integration would be nice.

Additionally, you can then select MacDive --> Settings --> Advanced --> Optimize Database to remove the misspellings so they won't come up again as suggestions.

That only works if the misspelled-buddies are no longer in use. If they're still associated with a dive, it won't delete them.

thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into this. Problem I see, though, is I can't tell what all my variations are, since we don't have a list of "buddies", unlike the list of "sites" we have. So I'd have to look at each of my 1000+ dives one at a time and note down all buddies variations. Very tedious. Am I missing some point in your suggestion?

oyarzun wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 11:15 pm The easiest way to clean up the variations.

On your mac you could:

1. Create a smart log with all your variation.
2. Select all dives.
3. Inspect the selected dives (cmd + i)
4. Change the buddies to the preferred spelling.

This assumes there are no other buddies on the selected dives. Otherwise you would need to only select dives with the same buddies.

Contacts integration would be nice.

Thanks. Good to know. Once I manage to clean up the variations, I'll definitely remember to do this.

js

mfupi wrote: ↑Fri Apr 21, 2023 1:03 am Additionally, you can then select MacDive --> Settings --> Advanced --> Optimize Database to remove the misspellings so they won't come up again as suggestions.

That only works if the misspelled-buddies are no longer in use. If they're still associated with a dive, it won't delete them.

jsneveu wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 7:37 pm thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into this. Problem I see, though, is I can't tell what all my variations are, since we don't have a list of "buddies", unlike the list of "sites" we have. So I'd have to look at each of my 1000+ dives one at a time and note down all buddies variations. Very tedious. Am I missing some point in your suggestion?

Not really, but you can always make this progressive. Set up the smart log with the variations you remember, select all and fix them, then optimize database to remove the unused spellings, and then look for new misspellings by looking to see what MacDive suggests. Then back to 1 to collect them with the smart log, fix, delete, re-try.

You should be able to see all the variations by:

1. Select All Dives in Library
2. Select Statistics in the toolbar
3. Select Buddies in General Statistics