Orphalese THINKS the Spread won't work

[MysticEast]

Hi Richard,
I was just getting ready to offer you a hearfelt thanks and congratulations for a brilliant version 10...

Then I found the following bug! "Orphalese THINKS the Spread won't work"

I think it may be relatively easy to fix, since the evidence points to the Spread working, if Orphalese wasn't using an out of date test before running it....

I've been working on a new Oracle - the Egyptian "Book of Fate" as used by Napoleon. I've started with the method of choosing the Oracle, which uses five rows of "Pen Slashes", which are supposed to be over 12 lines each. An odd row is recorded as "One Star", while an even row is recorded as "Two Stars".
Yes I know that this could be done in a relatively simple way, but I wanted to re-create those five rows of "Pen Slashes" - using a Spread with five independent decks, using the "New Powers of 10"!

Deck 1 with a Spread for just one of those lines worked no problem.

I then created the five Decks and started working on the HUGE Spread for all five lines.

I stopped for a breather and tested it when I'd got in two full rows of Pen Slashes plus just a "First One" for the remaining three rows (that's 65 cards). This Spread, using all the five decks WORKED!

Rather later I completed the whole Spread, fully expecting it to work as well, however now every time that it is run I am greeted with the error message that Deck 1 "has insuffcient cards". the Spread is then not run.

Yes the Spread contains the probably record breaking 155 cards!! And very clearly the first Deck, with only 72 cards, does not have all that number. However none of the individual lines "Break the Bank" for their respective Deck. I think that Orphalese is simply using the outdated test of the total number of cards in the Spread against that First Deck only.

I believe that given the first test, which worked well, that if it were not tested in that way, that the full Spread WOULD work.

A couple of other issues -

1) Problems with sharing new Multi-Pack Spreads
Given that we can sort out the problem and get the Spread working, then I will of course want to share it with the Oracle Deck "The Book of FATE". However I forsee several problems there.

i) The Spread Creation/Edit Wizard references the Decks using the Folder Names. Now these may well be different on the person who downloaded the Spread. To change that they could open the Spread in the "Edit Wizard" however disaster will follow!! (see next -)

ii) When the Wizard doesn't see the appropriate Decks on their computer it will either default to "Use Any" for each deck entry, which will MOVE every single card in the Spread to a new location! Now with 155 cards that will be a very hard one for another user to be faced with!! Or the Wizard MIGHT even default to just one "Use Any" Deck, with even more disastrous results!!

iii) I suggest that to get sharing working easily for Spreads using the new Multiple Deck options that it would be better to reference the Decks with the name given within the "PackInfo.xml". This is much more likely to be the same on anybodies PC. Indeed perhaps a change to stop editing of this within Orphalese (anybody who edits the xml file directly must take the consequences of their act!)

2) Problem with the Program not running the spread always with the specified Decks.
Although the first time I run the smaller Five Deck Spread (with only the two lines complete and the First card only of the remaining three lines - 65 cards) I ran the Spread with a different Deck in place. It worked flawlessly, first closing that "Other Deck", then opening all the five Decks of the Spread and Spreading them. Perfect behaviour!

Since then with the newer 10.0.3.1, the behaviour has changed and the Original Deck (not part of the Spread) remains open and not "Parked" yet it is the one which is shown shuffling! Bizzare! The other five Decks are shown "Parked".

If all five Decks are opened manually, then there remains just the problem from above of "Not Enough Cards".

I hope you can fix these issues, Regards - MysticEast

[Programmer]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce the problem you had with that message appearing. To try it I did a spread with two decks, one deck has six cards and the other has seven. The spread uses three cards from the first deck and all seven from the second. So the total number of cards in the spread is ten which is more than there are in the first deck, however I don't get that message. Maybe you could send me the spread you have created to administration at orphalese dot net and I will see if I get the message?

Regarding your worries about sharing the spread, if the decks are not available on the other users machine (which as you say is very probable) they get a message suggesting they use another deck or look for the missing one on the deck exchange. Then they can edit the spread to use the desired deck. The cards positions in the deck are not changed so I am not sure what you mean by your comment that "(using any) will MOVE every single card in the Spread to a new location". If you send me the spread, and let me know how many cards there should be in each deck, I will be able to test whether what I am saying is right because I will not have the decks in my collection and will have to edit them as described.

[MysticEast]

Hi Richard,
I've sent not only the Spread as you requested, but to make the tests quicker for you I've zipped up all the five Decks in question too.
I also included the two previous Spreads that worked, to show the difference. Plus two JPGs. one of the error message and one of the working partial Spread using all five Decks and 71 cards (72 cards in each Deck).

I hope you can find out what's going on.

Regards

MysticEast

[Programmer]

Hi MysticEast,

Thanks for sending all that through. I just uploaded a new version (10.0.3.3) which I think fixes all the issues you mentioned and hopefully hasn't created any new ones. So what you can check is:

- Erroneous message no longer appears.
- Spread no longer uses the current deck without switching to the relevant one first.

I also managed to improve the spread editor a bit because with a such a big spread I noticed it was going slower than it should have done when moving a card via the key press. I realized it was calling a refresh of the screen for every card in the spread instead of just once, so now that is faster.

[MysticEast]

Hi Richard,
Thanks, thanks and very very thanks!

"All present and accounted for - - SIR!"

I downloaded the new version 10.0.3.3 and tested it and seems to be A1 OK. Brilliant!

I also took a screen shot of the working result and intend to post that with my other screen shots on the facebook page - - as the "New Jedi Powers of 10"

I've also tested out the Spread Wizard and what you've done seems really excellent! It had been feeling extremely slow on such a large Spread, but now feels "Super Snappy"! Excellent!

Thanks once again for a brilliant piece of work - and a brilliant version 10!

Regards
MysticEast

[MysticEast]

I see elsewhere that you've done a fix recently on the Spread Creation Wizard, so I thought of your reply above -
"The cards positions in the deck are not changed so I am not sure what you mean by your comment that "(using any) will MOVE every single card in the Spread to a new location""

I tested it again with a couple of Spreads which I had duplicates of (just in case) and I needn't have worried - the error I mentioned no longer happens! Somehow without knowing exactly what I meant - you've fixed it!

The amazing benefits of second sight!!!

Thanks Richard

Regards
MysticEast

[MysticEast]

Thanks again for getting this Spread issue fixed!

With regard to the actual Deck for the "Book of Fate". It looks as if it might be good to wait a little on this. I COULD forge ahead with it now, but the result would be not perfect currently because of the text only nature of the Card Notes.

To explain, the "Book of Fate" can be thought of as reduced to a grand square of 32 x 32. BOTH axes using Graphic Elements for identification! that's the problem...

The one axis can be easily done with the Graphic on the Card. however the other really needs something graphical in the notes.

Could I add my weight to appeals for more than just basic text in the notes. Perhaps for next years version?

My preference would be for more than just a change to "rich text", since that isn't a lot better and varies depending on your operating system! My preference would be some version of HTML (or would XML be capable?) Anyway some method of inserting a graphic at the start of each line or paragraph.

Regards
MysticEast

Meanwhile I am continuing to think if there is any other way to do this...
One edition I have has converted BOTH axes to simple numbers, referencing all 1024 "squares"...
I didn't want to go down that route, since I think it is "sterile", despite actually working...
I'm also wondering if two Decks might do the trick, but the inspiration for that hasn't hit me yet... I don't want to make it needlessly complicated!
I'm also considering using a "Lookup Chart" as a Walpaper. Again, I would prefer not to use a "Lookup Chart" if at all possible!

[MysticEast]

Hi,
it took a couple of days of "mulling" to reach a solution.

The symbols on one axis of the large "Grid" became literally irrelevant if I presented the Oracle in a slightly different way.

Now one doesn't change the presentation of an Oracle lightly, but in this case I believe that it is the only way to present it in Orphalese.
In any case I'm not entirely sure whether those actual symbols were "Original". The original Papyrus, found by Napoleon's Team has been lost - no doubt in the collection of some rich collector!
Yes:- the symbols can be linked to the themes of the Questions, but the way that they are USED prevents them from having a direct link with their corresponding question:- but were merely a means of finding the correct Oracle Answer among 1024 answers!
One English edition had taken the liberty of changing the "received" symbols to include the Greek Zodiac and the Modern list of 9 Planets instead of some of them!!!

Instead of Presenting the whole thing as 32 different answers listed under each of those 32 different symbols...
-- if I link the question with it's corresponding answer, and present them all under the Star Symbols instead, then the whole thing simply WORKS!

The Star symbols themselves are most definitely NOT irrrelevant since they are the direct result of the original and official Oracle Selection Process. So in a real way this arrangement is perhaps MORE true to the original idea of the Oracle??

As a helpful note to anyone else needing to link together pieces of text from various places, like this. I used the sorting and "Concatenation" powers of Excell to do the magic!
Since I was in any case adding the Answer to each Question in turn, I decided to use the same magic to add a Question Topic and Number to make it easier to find and a Field stating that the answer was from Hermes Trismegitus - well that's what the Oracle is all about so...
Excell allowed me to easily change the order of the Questions, to a Thematic Order, which will be easier to find, while keeping each question with it's appropriate answer.

Quite clearly those editors back at the end of the 19thC and start of the 20thC didn't have Excell - I found that someone has changed what was most probably an Oracle with all Male Oriented Questions so that the two questions about Love have one male and one female - however they didn't quite edit this correctly!! Some of the answers to a "Woman Asking about Love" had male answers!! I have taken the liberty to get the genders right, leaving it as one Female and One Male Question about Love....


While "mulling" on all of that, I was working on the Scanning and OCR of the Spanish Edition, the first to enter my possession ( and the most faithful to the original).
I will be sharing my version of that Spanish Edition soon, and then start working on the English....

Regards MysticEast