Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Discussions about Diving Log 6.0 - questions and hints

What field type do you prefer for horizontal and vertical visibility?

Text Field
27
71%
Numeric Field
11
29%
 
Total votes: 38

divinglog
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Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by divinglog »

Greg wants to add support for freely editable visibility fields for the iPhone Dive Log in future as addition to the existing "Good-Average-Bad" field and this is also a long requested feature for Diving Log. We want to add one field for horizontal and one field for vertical visibility, but we are not sure if it should be a simple text field so you can enter ranges or any other free text or better a numeric field where you can enter only a fixed number, e.g. 10 meter.

The advantage of the numeric field is, that it can be used for statistics, e.g. you can create statistics for best / worst visibility or charts. Textfields would be more flexible for the user, but you can't do much with this data other than displaying/printing. So what do you think?
samward
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed May 06, 2009 06:46

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by samward »

divinglog wrote:The advantage of the numeric field is, that it can be used for statistics, e.g. you can create statistics for best / worst visibility or charts. Textfields would be more flexible for the user, but you can't do much with this data other than displaying/printing. So what do you think?
While you can use the numeric field for statistics more easily, you can also do some statistics with text fields (ie frequency distribution).
No Waiting
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Apr 19, 2007 09:58

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by No Waiting »

Text fields get my vote, that way you can stick to soley numeric values if you wish, or enter something more descriptive.
bowlofpetunias
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:49
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by bowlofpetunias »

I would prefer text as most of my visibility entries tend to be something like 5-8 as the viz varies.
froop
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:01

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by froop »

I vote for indexed text fields.

For me, numeric fields (eg, visibility in metres) is too specific. I'll very seldom say visibility is 7m. It's usually somthing like "0-5m", "5-10m", "10-15m", "15-20m".

Good/Average/Bad doesn't give enough variety, and can be very different depending on circumstances. At some sights, 10m visibility could be considered excellent, whilst at others 15m is considered average.

So my ideal is to be able to set up an indexed list of editable text fields. That gives the user the choice of:
1="Zero Vis"
2="Bad"
3="Average"
4="Good"
5="Excellent"

or

1="<1m"
2="1-5m"
3="5-10m"
4="10+m"

or

1=Bad
2=Good

or

1=1m
2=2m
3=3m
4=4m

you get the picture.

This way gives you plenty og flexibility, and its also easy to report on.
divinglog
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by divinglog »

Thank you all so far for your answers and thoughts. I'll wait a little bit longer to get some more votes, but from the current result we tend to use simple text fields or better text dropdown fields like for weather or dive suit. In the dropdown lists I can add already used items from the current logbook so it is easier to re-use them.

I only want to mention one more potential issue with text fields: the automatic unit conversion can't be applied to them. So if you enter the visibility distance in feet and ever decide to switch to metric units in future, the content of the visibility fields won't be recalculated, they will stay in feet.

The "Good-Average-Bad" field will not be removed of course, so you can use either the text fields, or the old method or both together.
CompuDude
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 00:40

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by CompuDude »

Will the SmartTrak importer also be updated to pull numeric vis info from SmartTrak into the new field? This has been an annoyance about DL for me... DL ignores the numeric value I enter into SmartTrak and only uses the no/poor/fair/good/great tag instead, which, as was mentioned, varies greatly and subjectively per site.

Frankly, another option may be a min/max sort of entry, that would allow someone to enter 5-12 foot vis, which more truly captures the range, but which still could be used in a chart or graph.

3-5 foot vis and 5-8 foot vis, at a local shore dive location, would both fall under the "poor vis" catagory for me, but both are actually quite different experiences.
divinglog
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by divinglog »

Yes, I'll try to update all importers when new fields are available. If I may forget one, please don't hesitate to remind me. As I use a text field for this you can enter of course also ranges, which is one of the advatages to have a text field instead of a numeric field.
sffrenchman
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2009 05:30

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by sffrenchman »

I like a numeric field better as a 40-foot visibility in the Pacific Northwest would be good while it would be rather bad in Cozumel. A number is a number while good, avarage or bad is dependent on many factors.
lloyd_borrett
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Location: Frankston South, Victoria, Australia
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by lloyd_borrett »

Doing visibility as text dropdown fields as you do for the weather and suit type would suit me the best. That way I can setup my own ranges, e.g.
<2m
2-5m
5-10m
10+m
In phpDivingLog I could do stats on them.
terrylowe
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Location: Hattiesburg, MS USA
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by terrylowe »

I vote for numerical
Terry
Rapier
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by Rapier »

I voted for Text because I also tend to use a range for visibility.

I like the idea of numerical so that it can be used for statistical calculations and changing units. A possible solution might be to offer a "Lowest/Worst" visibility field and a "Highest/Best" visibility field which would allow for a calculated average visibility field. That combined with the current "Good, Average, Bad" drop down would provide a lot of information about the conditions. In Quarry dives of the Northern USA a 40-50 foot visibility would be outstanding, but the same range on a Reef in the Florida Keys would be Bad.
divinglog
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by divinglog »

Visibility text fields are now available in the current beta: https://www.divinglog.de/blog/?p=709
Rbox
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Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 18:49

Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by Rbox »

One text field that has to be added should be "miserable" (i.e. < 1m) -In Dutch this would be "miserabel"
divinglog
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Re: Please vote for type of new visibility fields

Post by divinglog »

There are now 2 free text fields where you can enter anything for visibility.
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