This page goes through what SharkPoint for Windows actually did, feature by feature. It is the detail behind the summary on the product page.
Logbook records
- Create, edit and delete dives — multiple logbooks, each with an unlimited number of dives.
- Create, edit and delete dive buddy records, unlimited.
- Create, edit and delete dive place records, unlimited.
- Create, edit and delete dive school records, unlimited.
- Attach bitmaps, internet links and notes to logbook records.
- Cut, copy, paste and insert whole logbook records.
- Undo and redo the last twenty actions.
The reason buddies, places and schools were separate record types rather than text typed into a dive is that it makes them findable. Twelve years of dives with a name in a free-text field is twelve years of typos; twelve years of dives linked to a buddy record is a list you can pull up in one action.
Printing with EPF
The Easy Print Format system let divers build their own logbook layout and print their dive data into it. Rather than accepting one fixed page design, a diver could produce something that matched the book they already kept, or the format an operation or a course wanted to see.
Units and data quality
- Support for both metric and imperial units of measure throughout.
- Validity checks on all numeric fields.
- An enhanced warning system that flagged incomplete or inconsistent information — and could be switched off by divers who did not want it.
Unit handling is less trivial than it sounds. A log kept partly in feet and partly in metres is a log whose statistics are meaningless, and mixed units are one of the commonest ways a long-running logbook quietly corrupts itself.
Statistics
- Comprehensive log statistics including up to seven histograms and your personal dive records.
- Automatic tracking of accumulated bottom time, both to date per dive and to date per log.
- Automatic calculation of air consumption rate.
- Log initialisation options: unit type, starting dive number, and starting accumulated bottom time — so a diver migrating from paper kept their real totals.
Air consumption is the statistic divers tend to find most useful, because it is the one that visibly changes with experience and it depends on the whole dive rather than any single number in it. Calculating it consistently needs start and end pressure, cylinder size, average depth and dive time recorded properly on every dive — which is an argument for filling the fields in even when it feels like bookkeeping.
Equipment and personal records
- An equipment log to track gear and servicing intervals.
- A personal information page holding certification, medical and insurance details.
Servicing tracking has an obvious practical value: regulators and cylinders have service intervals, and a log that quietly tells you when one is due is doing something a paper book cannot. Manufacturer schedules always take precedence over any reminder a piece of software generates.
Planning
The Dive Plan Assistant let a diver check a plan against the common recreational dive table systems, and the VDAF (Virtual Dive Agency File) format described those planning parameters in a file rather than fixing them in the program. A planning aid, sitting alongside training, tables and a dive computer rather than in place of them — see the Divers Alert Network's health and medicine resources for the standing guidance on dive planning and safety.
Housekeeping
- Context-sensitive online manual and help.
- An included uninstaller.
- A program assistant that guided users through the software's features and raised warnings where needed.
See also compatibility for what the software ran on and talked to.