New development blog

[divinglog]

Hi everyone

I just started a blog about the Diving Log development: https://www.divinglog.de/blog/

So you may see announcements and Diving Log 5.0 insights more likely in the blog as here in the forum as I think a blog is better suited for this. The news section with RSS feed on the website will still exists but it will contain only short announcements about updates (more officially things). In the blog I want to write more "behind the scenes" things. I hope you enjoy

Sven

[froop]

Sven,
I've been following your development blog with great interest since purchasing DL4.0. It looks like you're really stepping it up and making some great improvements to the user-friendliness and flexibility of DivingLog. I can't wait until it ready for the rest of us!

[divinglog]

Hello froop

Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoy my blog There is not so much feedback in the blog comments, but from what I can see in the blog statistics it seems that I have a few readers which is motivating

Thank you!
Sven

[bowlofpetunias]

Hi Sven

I am following your blog also ... what I see looks great and I am looking forward to the release, just dont want to distract you from version 5

[divinglog]

Thank you, that's right

[athelas]

Hi,

I am new here, sorry if I place this question on the wrong place but I would like to ask about two 5.0 features.

Are you planning to include unicode support - the way Report designer handles text fields right now dissallows broad localization of templatex, because fields need to be in certain script and this e.g. I cannot mix central european language to the set with western languages. I can change the scrip to CE but then I does not always display western languages correctly.

Second question is about profile chart. Would id be possible to have a fixed vertical axis scale - e.g. use fixed scale for depth from 0 to 40 and ascent/descend rate from +20 to -20. Right now some shallow dives look really scary as well as asc./desc. makes it difficult to point out the problematic areas when the scale is changing from dive to dive.

Thank you for you info!

Addition to unicode - the problem is a bit more broad than I first expected, you can read related post in Extensions viewtopic.php?f=10&t=679&p=4282#p4282

[divinglog]

Hi

Thank you for your feedback! Regarding the Unicode issue, is there a way for me to reproduce the problem? I think if I have your logbook and report designer file and change my regional settings to yours, I should see the same issue. But I think this problem will be obsolete with version 5.0, because it is built on top of the .NET Framework which should have much better Unicode support than version 4.0, which is built in Visual Basic 6.

The fixed scale might be not so easy, because when you set the maximum scale lower than the maximum value there might be some strange behaviours and possible errors in the program. I have to do some tests after the initial 5.0 release and maybe I can implement it at a later time, but currently it would make the internal handling a lot more complicated.

Kind regards,
Sven

[nielsiek]

Dear Sven,

Great dive log application for iPod touch. As far as I can see it's not possible to put photo's at a dive on the iPod. Is that correct? will that be a feature on version 5.0?


Kind regards,
Niels

[divinglog]

Hi Niels

Thank you very much! The iPhone Dive Log is from Greg, he will post soon an answer regarding adding photos on the iPod Touch.

Best regards,
Sven

[gregm]

Hi Niels,

The current version of Dive Log on iPhone (1.1.3) does have some minimal support for capturing and using images. In the current version this is limited to images of your certification cards (More->Personal->Certifications) and images of Buddies that are linked contacts on your iPhone (via the normal Contacts mechanism for capturing and using mages for a Buddy).

I am planning to add more support for images in Dive Log on iPhone (in fact, I happen to be working on that right now). The additional images will be associated with a Dive Site (for example a picture of the map that the dive master draws during his/her briefing), a Country (for example an image of the Country's flag), your Personal entry (an image of yourself), Buddy (extended to unlinked Buddies and synced to the desktop) and your equipment items.

Images are very resource intensive and are handled by iPhone OS in a way that is fairly limited compared to the desktop. For example, there is no way to refer to images in the iPhone's Camera/Photo app except by explicitly asking the user to pick the image one at a time. Once you have a reference to an image you can only use that image by taking a copy of it (and storing it within your own application data area). This means that any images that you import to your iPhone from your underwater camera must be duplicated on the device in order to use them within Dive Log on iPhone. As a result of some of these limitations, there is no current plan to include a general photo management function (similar to what is available in Diving Log 4.0 on the desktop) within Dive Log on iPhone. The information (paths to the photos on your desktop) contained in the Diving Log 4.0 database about photos is maintained on the iPhone so they are not lost when you sync your data back to the desktop, but the images themselves are not copied to the iPhone. Imagine if you had just one full resolution photo per dive and a total of over 2600 dives (like I do). That is a lot of data to deal with on a phone.

While the iPhone is a very powerful device, in the end of the day it is still a phone. The application design on the iPhone tends to lead to more task oriented applications that are somewhat more limited in scope than their desktop counter parts. The goal is to keep the application quick to start, quick to use, quick to exit and focused on a particular task. It might be more appropriate to have a separate application to deal with (a subset) of your desktop managed photos on the iPhone. As an underwater photographer myself, I have been thinking about the issue of dealing with "per dive" photos on the iPhone. I don't have a particular solution in mind at this point in time but will continue to work on it. I'd certainly be interested in any input from users about how you would imagine using "per dive" photos on the iPhone. Feel free to send input to me at "support at moremobilesoftware dot com".

Cheers,

Greg

[nielsiek]

Thanks for the answer on my question. I agree with you that there shouldn't by a lot of pictures uploaded to the iphone. But it would by nice if it's possible to do for example max 10 picture with a resolution of max 100k each. And it should be nice if you could choose your own pictures. I don't want to use space for my certificate and flag pictures on my iphone. I think buddy is ok, how the dive site look above water and a drawing of the dive site. And then you have 7 pictures of what you can see underwater at that dive site. Preferable picture's of diver himself, but you can offer a low resolution picture out of stock.
And I have a question Where on "support at moremobilesoftware dot com" can I post my comments?


Cheers

Niels

[gregm]

Hi Niels,

Thank you for your input. I will keep your thoughts in mind as I move forward with the development. One quick note, the "flag" image does not need to be a picture of a "flag". It will be a general image that you could put any picture from the photo library or a photo from the camera in. The "flag" is just one possible suggestion for what you could put in that image.

And I have a question Where on "support at moremobilesoftware dot com" can I post my comments?

Sorry for the confusion. This is just a notation for an e-mail address that helps avoid "spam". Unfortunately, spammers troll web pages looking for properly formed e-mail addresses that they can target. So if you take "support at moremobilesoftware dot com" and replace the " at " with "@" and the " dot " with "." you can send me an e-mail message directly.

Cheers,

Greg

[CompuDude]

The current version of Dive Log on iPhone (1.1.3) does have some minimal support for capturing and using images. In the current version this is limited to images of your certification cards (More->Personal->Certifications) and images of Buddies that are linked contacts on your iPhone (via the normal Contacts mechanism for capturing and using mages for a Buddy).

I am planning to add more support for images in Dive Log on iPhone (in fact, I happen to be working on that right now). The additional images will be associated with a Dive Site (for example a picture of the map that the dive master draws during his/her briefing), a Country (for example an image of the Country's flag), your Personal entry (an image of yourself), Buddy (extended to unlinked Buddies and synced to the desktop) and your equipment items.

Hi, Greg, a comment of yours here about "unlinked buddies" caught my interest.

Like many users of your software, I use a PC for Sven's Diving Log app as well as a separate Mac, which my iPhone is synced to. As a result, there is no connection between contacts on my iPhone and contacts that Diving Log can reference on my system.

When I add a dive manually into Dive Log, at the dive site, I can choose dive buddies right from Contacts. However, that connection is broken, because I overwrite the iPhone's log with the more-complete desktop log, after I download my computer into the desktop app. (I hand-transcribe my iPhone-based notes into the desktop app first)

Is there any way around this?

Unfortunately, I don't think the two-way sync will work for me, because I actually download my dive computer into SmartTrak first, and then export into Diving Log solely for the purpose of printing logs (Diving Log's print support is vastly superior to SmartTrak's) and getting the data onto the iPhone. (As a side note, the quick entry pick lists for dive sites are wiped after this as well, forcing me to add sites I dive weekly as "new" every time.)

I'm probably SOL because of the somewhat unique workflow I use, but I thought it might be worth asking...

[divinglog]

Hi

With the new importers it should be possible to sync the iPhone data first back to the PC logbook and then import the dive profiles and other data from SmartTrak into the existing dives. This has not worked up to the update linked above, but now you can import data into existing manual entered dives.

This way your linked buddies and other linked entries from the iPhone should be still available, when you sync this updated logbook back to the iPhone.

Kind regards,
Sven

[gregm]

Hi,

I just wanted to underscore Sven's comments a little bit. By using the new importers that allow you to "merge" the data that you got from the iPhone and the data that you import from your dive computer (or SmartTrak) should solve the issue of you loosing the "linked" information like Dive Sites and Buddies that were created on the iPhone originally (so you will not have to re-enter Dive Sites that you have previously visited).

The Buddy and iPhone/Mac Contacts linking deserves some additional explanation as it is a little complex. However, the way that it is handled on the iPhone means that you do not need to have access to your iPhone's (or Mac's) address book on the PC to maintain the information. When you pick a Buddy from the Contact's application on the iPhone that Contact's information (as much as can be supported by the Dive Log database format) is actually copied into the Dive Log database on the iPhone and is eventually synced to the PC. So if you look at a Buddy in Diving Log on the PC it will have information like name, address, phone, fax, mobile, e-mail etc. (the iPhone Contacts application supports multiple or each type of information, but Dive Log's Buddy table only supports one of each so only one entry is copied if there are more than one - it defaults to copying the "Home" entry if it exists). When that item is then synced back to the iPhone, Dive Log will attempt to match that record to the Contacts database and present the (presumably) more up to date Contact information from the iPhone within the Dive Log application. This matching is based primarily on the name (first and last). So as long as the Buddy item is maintained across the sync, that Buddy will still show the information about that Buddy from the iPhone's Contacts database within Dive Log.

In the end, Buddies actually maintain two types of links. There is a link to the Contact's database on the iPhone as well as the "internal" database link within Dive Log (and ultimately Diving Log 4.0). The "green" and "red" sync icons that show up when you are viewing a Buddy are related to the link forged with the Contacts database on the iPhone. The internal link is the one that Sven's suggestion will address (this will keep the Buddies showing up on the Buddy Tab within Dive Log). Interestingly, as long as the Buddy's name still matches the name in the Contact's database the Buddy will still show up as linked (green sync symbol indicating a link to the Contact database) when you view an individual dive's buddies even if you entered it manually on the PC side and the internal link was broken.

I know it all very confusing ... but the goal was to have maximum compatibility and to have the "right thing" happen in most cases. Unfortunately, there are cases (like manually re-entering data into yet a 4th program) that will complicate things. Sven's new importers should go a long way to improving this situation as well.

Cheers,

Greg