Syncing log trough dropbox - lost pictures

[erognlid]

I just noticed a issue with pictures when syncing between two computers using dropbox.

I added some pictures to a lot of the dives I logged on my laptop. When I synked it back to my desktop computer I lost all the pictures. After closer inspections I think I understand why - the pictures is just an link, the graphic is not embedded in the database.

This works OK, at least partly OK when your working on just one computer, but not when synking or moving between more computers. The path to the pictures might be totally different on different computers. And it would often be a situation where pictures are stored at a NAS instead of the family computer.

I guess the tought behind this is not to have the mdb file grow to much. For instance when Its a need to send it to you for something. That could be solved by adding a "strip loggbok for emailing" function.

[divinglog]

Yes, MDB files are not made to embed large image binary data. There are small low res versions of most images embeded in the database, but not images attached to dives. The only solution right now is using the same image path on all computers. You can also store the images inside the Dropbox folder and let it sync these files automatically. That way the path should be the same, too. I plan to add relative path names for quite some time, but this is not as easy as it sounds (converting back and forth without breaking the links) and won't solve all problems automatically (realative path names can also break if the location between logbook and images change).

[erognlid]

Could an option be to add a image folder to the location of the mdb file and when you ad a picture to a dive the program automatically copy the picture file to that specific location. To reduce the amount of data traveling trough dropbox there shoud then be a log telling wich photos are new and need to be transferred and that only new photos are put on dropbox and then automatilcy deleted when they are in place at all synced computers.

[divinglog]

The Dropbox sync client is pretty smart and will only sync files that are changed and it will even use the local network for syncing between local computers. This is some complicated stuff and I don't really want to add these things to Diving Log. There are special apps that can do this pretty well and I leave it up to the user where he wants to store his image files. You can get your scenario working with the existing sync apps and Diving Log will access the image files on each PC as long as it could find them.