Because the sample struct is passed by value, the size of the structure
can't be changed without also changing the function signature and
breaking backwards compatibility. This prevents adding new fields in the
future, to support some new features.
When passing the sample struct by reference using a pointer, the size of
the pointer does always remains the same.
For gas consumption calculations it's very convenient to know whether a
tank is used for example in a sidemount configuration, or as
oxygen/diluent tank on a rebreather.
For rebreather dives, it's convenient to know whether a gas mix is used
as a closed-circuit mix (oxygen/diluent) or as an open circuit mix
(bailout).
Some dive computers, especially freediving computers, supports multiple
samples per second. Since our smallest unit of time is one second, we
can't represent this, and the extra samples are dropped. Therefore, the
units are changed to milliseconds to prepare supporting this extra
resolution.
The new Excursion v6 firmware supports some new commands for accessing
the dive index, and also uses a completely new data format. To preserve
backwards compatibility in the download logic to some extent, some
critical fields such as the profile length, remain stored at identical
offsets.
The new data format now contains a version field to allow for future
modifications. This version field is located at byte offset 3, which
corresponds to the highest byte of the 32 bit dive number in the old
format. Thus, unless someone manages to reach 16M dives, this field will
always be zero for the old format.
Co-authored-by: Ryan Gardner <ryebrye@gmail.com>
For dive computers where the reference time (epoch) of the device is
unknown, libdivecomputer uses the current time of the device (devtime)
and the host system (systime) to synchronize both clocks.
Currently, both timestamps are passed directly to the constructor of the
parser. With the new public function, the application can adjust the
timestamps afterwards.
Some dive computers store the depth as an absolute pressure value (in
bar). To convert to a depth value (in meters), the atmospheric pressure
and water density are required. For dive computers that do not have
those values available, libdivecomputer uses a default value. With the
new public api functions, applications can adjust those default values.
Some dive computers already provided a backend specific calibration
function. Those functions are now deprecated. They are kept around to
maintain backwards compatibility for now, but they will be removed in
the next version.
