Patches to add basic support for the Suunto EON Steel

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 12:38:08PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
> >
> > So yes, let's figure out a sane way to hand data like that back to the
> > application.
> 
>  "So I think we might want to introduce an event type that literally
>   gives two strings: a description and a value. And then subsurface can
>   show that in an information window or something (maybe similarly to
>   how we show the dive computer name - hover over the name, and get the
>   dive computer "random data" fields"
> 
> So I literally suggest just "DC_SAMPLE_STRING", which comes with a
> structure that has two constant strings: the "descriptor" and the
> "value". Nothing else. No structure, no rules except for "strings for
> human consumption".

Is this per sample data or per dive date? So I think this is a
DC_FIELD_STRING in libdivecomputer nomenclature.

> For the battery thing, it could be
> 
>  { "Battery at start of dive", "Charge: 98%, Voltage: 4.157V" }
> 
> but it could also be things like
> 
>  { "Dive algorithm", "Suunto RGBM" }
> 
> or for things like the Uemis (if it were ever converted to libdivecomputer):
> 
>  { "Suit", "3-5mm wetsuit" }

Yes, this would be extremely useful and I have a number of backends that
could take advantage of that - and I already have an idea how to present
this in Subsurface. I coded this for the Uemis way back when in the Gtk
days, so this will need to be redone, but getting description / value
pairs and showing them in Subsurface would be very easy and very powerful.

And yes, this is MUCH better than the complicated deco types we have been
discussing.

> just to give a non-EON-Steel example. The point being that most modern
> dive computers have these kinds of random fields that it definitely
> isn't worth trying to organize a data structure for.

Yes. Agreed.

> And then, subsurface could certainly try to match some strings (ie
> maybe we could catch that "suit" thing), but others it would just show
> in a popup when you hover over the dive computer name. Or add to the
> "Notes" window by default (although that would probably be annoying).
> Or something like that.

I wouldn't add them to notes. I'd create a separate UI area where such
"structured data" can be shown as "additional info" or something like
that.

/D