Beta 6.5 Reading Notes - First Impressions

[Cowhead]

Richard,

I've been playing with the beta 6.5 readings system, and I'm a bit confused.

Suppose I spread some cards and decide I want to save notes on the reading. It *appears* to me the only way is to start the Readings Wizard and click the disc icon to save the reading first. After that, I can use the text boxes to add/edit notes. I close the readings wizard, and gather the cards to clear away the reading. Now, if I try to look at that reading again, I get the message that it was created with a previous version of OT, and a backup is made. OT tries to open the reading, but just piles all of the cards atop each other in the upper left corner.

Am I doing things out of order? If not, something isn't working for me. If so, it's still odd behavior...

One new thing I don't like: Once the reading has been saved, the cards appear to be locked down. Only way to move them seems to be to drag their outlines around on the grid. No way that I can see to *add* a card.

I'll try to keep an open mind about this, but for now I much prefer the flexibility of the older system, where you could move the cards around on the screen, add or remove cards, then save and have your changes remembered.

Is this lock-down behavior something that is required by the new notes-by-card system? If not, maybe you could add an unlock button, so a reading can be built-upon by reckless folks like me.

Why I care: I do a daily reading for myself, one that uses five cards. Two of those cards are birth cards that never change, one is year card that only changes in January, one is a month card, and one is the daily card. It is very handy to be able to save a base-reading with the first four cards. Then each day, open it, shuffle, add the daily card, and save-as for the daily reading. Without the ability to change the cards in a saved reading, I would have to manually select the first four cards every day. For me, that would be a big step backward.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding something important here, and there is a simple solution I have missed. Hope so!

-- Cowhead

[Programmer]

Hi Cowhead,

Doh!

As usual, I know from your precise description of things exactly what is going wrong. The problem is that the new .reading format is slightly different from the old one. The new one saves the card co-ordinates as percentages of the screen width and height, which is much more sensible than the old way which was to saves absolute pixel co-ordinates (very bad for sharing between or upgrading monitors).

Therefore it is very important that the first time a reading is opened it is upgraded to the new system. The .reading file (which is just a .xml file with a different extension) also contains a version table, and after upgrading a reading the current version of the program is saved to this table for future reference. When a .reading is opened, anything with a version prior to 6.5 is upgraded.

This is where the problem lies, in that the beta is actually still version 6.4 something, so the program is running the conversion procedure everytime the file is opened, being fooled by the 6.4 version tag that the reading still needs to be converted.

This accounts for the jumble of cards in the top corner. For example, you start of with co-ordinates 512, 350 (pixels) in the old system. This is converted to something like 50, 50 () in the new percentage system, and that is being converted again to 2,2 () or something, ad infinitum...

Anyway, I have hard-wired a fix for this in the new beta I just uploaded. The best thing would be to delete any readings you have modified with the previous beta and restore from the back-up copy which is made automatically, as you have noticed. You will see that with this version problem fixed the back-up copy is only ever made once, when the reading is first converted.

To go on to the question of how the readings are used, you should see that there is a second tab on the reading wizard form. This allows you to modify the position of the cards. The first tab allows you to edit the notes on a card by card basis (the first box is for general notes). The advantage of this is that opening an old reading for viewing is now divorced from editing a reading, two operations that don't necessarily go together. Readings can be opened, edited, saved and closed without ever laying out a single card. Readings can also be viewed without ever seeing the Reading Wizard, avoiding the necessity of having to move it out the way all the time.

Try making some notes against each card and you will see what I mean. When the reading is laid out the card notes appear in green popup windows, and the general notes appear in a green popup too, when the mouse is hovered over the deck itself. The locking is to remind people that the program is in a special state, that they have a reading open. There might be a better way to accomplish that, I am open to suggestions!

Cheers
Richard

[Cowhead]

Okay, restoring a reading works much better now! Thanks for the ultra-fast fix!

You make some good points on advantages of making the reading wizard and the actual spread more independent from each other.

Maybe another way to make the reading-mode more evident would be to apply some change or special effect to the image of the undealt deck. So, for instance, it may appear to be translucent, or embossed, or have a special symbol superimposed on it. Just some visual cue that says You have a reading open. No idea how (im)practical that might be. If it's do-able, it could be instead-of or in-addition-to the card locking.

I won't mind the locking if there is some way to turn it off, at least temporarily, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous message.

-- Cowhead

[Programmer]

Hi Cowhead,

I will have a look at that, I am sure that there must be another way of flagging Reading Mode. Of course, as a programmer I am always worried about what state the program is in, so having the cards immobilised was a (perhaps too easy) way of achieving this.

I didn't really pick up your on your earlier comment about the daily reading. My first though was that you just need a save as option back. This would let you load up your template reading, and then (now that we have agreed to have the reading unlocked) add the fourth card and create a new reading based on the cards that are out. Problem: the only simple way I can see of doing this would be to clear the reading notes and then create a virgin set - i.e. it would only be the cards in their positions that carried over from the template reading, not any notes. Would this work for you?

I get the impression that you use the reading feature more as a kind of diary than anything else. I wonder if that is how other users make use of it? I made these changes thinking more in terms of people doing readings and then sending them to other program users, who would get the benefit of seeing the reading in an uncluttered way without the reading notes form distracting them. Of course, you would get this benefit too when it comes to looking over old archives. The challenge will be too make the program amenable to both ways of working with it.

Watch this space :)
Richard

[Cowhead]

>> clear the reading notes and then create a virgin set .... Would this work for you? <<

That would be fine for me.

Another way to flag the reading-state occurred to me. Perhaps you could change the shape and/or color of the deal-a-card arrow on the deck top?