Suggestion: Rotate Round Decks

[Programmer]

Hi Greg, Everyone,

I just uploaded the first beta of 8.3 which includes the zoom idea. You can show the zoom form, and then see the detail on whichever card interests you by selecting it. If you magnify a particular area in the usual way and then see the same area of the next card magnified and so on. Press F7 to restore the normal magnification. Normal magnification is also restored when you resize the form.

It is not dockable, but the program will remember the size and position of the form, so once you have it where you want it you won't have to move or size it again.

Cheers,
Richard

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi Richard,

I've just tried out the new Zoom Box. I like it and it works well. So thanks and well done for the speed of dealing with this request!

I still think it would look a little more professional if it docked, and/or if it could loose it's Title bar and control buttons. But it does it's job perfectly well as it is. I can loose it's title bar over the Orphalese one at the top to save space. I might just lengthen my folder names so that I don't cover over the Deck name there. Some Windows I have seen have invisible Title bars except when you mouse up there, when it appears. That might be a nice way of doing it.

One downside, like a number of other forms, it stays on top when you go to the Tarot Zone. Now you have to Ctrl+G AND Minimise the Zoom Box each time. This should be unnecessary. Added to which when you minimise it, like the Deck Sharing Window it minimises to over the Tarot Zone Controls. Annoying! However thankfully, unlike the Deck Sharing Window, which always seems to minimise over the Tarot Zone Controls, at least this seems to remember where to minimise to next time.

One further idea. It would be good to extend the usefullness of this Zoom Box to the 'Free Selection' Deck if at all possible. This is one area where a small number or Icon can be very important in choosing which card is drawn. If the Zoom Box, with it's focusable attention could be used here, this would be very useful indeed!
Egs.
For choosing a Significator in a number of Spreads. A specific card needs to be found, followed by a draw from the deck.
In the I Ching, where currently you have to choose the Hexagram(s) separately and then 'find' them in the Deck. With some of the Decks this can be quite difficult. Even using Ctrl+Shift+Z, followed by F4, and then scrolling them with the Arrow keys. Unless you count the cards from the left, you still have to see that tiny Arabic Number on some cards (and on some it isn't there at all! Well you can't help me with that!)

Regards Greg the Yeti

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi Richard,

I've just been using the Zoom Box in preparing a new deck for use on Orpahlese and found it very useful indeed.

On spreading out all the cards in order I can easily check that the Card notes are correctly logged in. Great!

However I did notice two things which would help to improve things even more.

1. The Card Notes Pop-Up doesn't avoid the Zoom Box and so quite often you only have a fraction of a second to notice a number on the card (or in this case a Hexagram) before it is obscured by the Card Notes. Not ideal. The Card Notes already does an 'intelligent' flipping from left to right, depending on how close to the edge of the screen it is. Would it be possible to get it to avoid (if possible!) the Zoom Box?

2. The Card Notes responds to the 'Mouse Over Action' as standard. In fact there is no option as far as I am aware. For me I would prefer if the Zoom Box parallelled this and also changed as you moused over, rather than having to click each card each time. This shouldn't be impossible? Could it be a preferences setting to allow for people who prefer things as they are?

Regards Greg the Yeti

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi Richard,

A few days ago I remember reading someone saying that they thought that 90 degree rotations would be enough.

I can't help disagreeing.

Perhaps the person was thinking of the Motherpeace Deck? But even with the Motherpeace it is not actually enough. Well it's OK for 77 of the Motherpeace cards but not for 'X - Wheel of Fortune', which is Astrological and therefore REQUIRES 12 increments within the circle. That comes down to 30 degrees. The existing 'fudge it' Deck ignores this issue and perhaps not many people have access to the lwb let alone the Full Book that was published to go with them.

My personal opinion is that it would be much better (if it could be done) to do the angles for rotation NOT based on any fixed number of degrees but as 360 / X. If this could be done in the software then this WOULD necessarily satisfy everyone. ALL the various divisions of a circle could be done accurately and simply by simply providing that bottom number of the fraction. (I can never remember the names of the top or bottom number - can you?)

The problem that the Motherpeace Deck provides is that different cards require a different angle. This might require things to be on a 'Per Card' basis? Complex but perhaps the only way of doing it properly.

I do think that it would be a great shame not to 'cover all the bases' with regard to rotation. Since so many Tarot Decks have Astrological symbolism, and many other Decks are being produced with various symbolisms including Astrological (12), Planetary(7 or 10 or 11), Four Compass Points or 'Winds' (4), Venus (5), Various Tri-groups of Deities (3), that it would be a great shame at this stage to create an implementation that did not include all of these possibilities.

Regards Greg the Yeti

[Programmer]

Hi Greg,

My first thought about this is that it would work fine when it comes to laying out the cards from a pre-existing spread or reading. The spread file would have fields like Rotation=-.25,
Rotation=+.25 etc, and the program would take care of making sure they all appeared in the right place.

The snag is that it would not be so hard to position the cards manually if you were allowed literally any degree of rotation. I think that anything you can do with a spread file you should also be able to do with the mouse. And in the same way that it is easy to position a card in the spread designer when you have the snap to grid setting on, it would be easier if the card rotations were limited to discrete steps. What I envisage is you position the mouse over any corner of the card, and the cursor changes to a circle or something. Then when you click and drag, the card rotates around its central point in the direction you drag, but always in small steps. Otherwise I can envisage the user spending ages trying to get the cards to form a perfect circle or whatever. I think you would need a lot of precision and mouse skill to do that.

The obvious counter argument would be that you could set up the reading using any number of degrees, even if you couldn't do this when moving them with the mouse. But the same interface questions have to be answered in the spread designer too. Every time I start thinking about this rotation business I start to get a headache!

As you know, this is all up in the air at the moment, so all suggestions are welcome. As far as the other suggestions go, I think they are all practical except for the one about the zoom image changing on a mouse-over, and if there was a general concensus they could get prioritised. The problem with the zoom one is that there is a lot more processing to set up the zoom image than there is to set up a box of notes. I can see the program running into memory issues if the users quickly skimmed the mouse over four or five cards in a single movement.

Cheers,
Richard

[Programmer]

...I meant the snag is that it would not be so EASY, of course.

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi Richard,

Actually I think my idea would actually make things much much easier for the user!

Once a 360/X factor had been set for the Deck then it would be simply a question of rotating cards with the increments you had preset.

This would work easily for ANY increment, 360/2, 360/3, 360/4, 360/5, 360/6, 360/7, 360/10, 360/12 etc etc.

I would suggest something like the , and / or Number Pad 4 or 6, (perhaps together with a control key?) to simply rotate the card clockwise or anticlockwise by the specified increment. The Shuffling mechanism would also need to work in accordance with that preset increment.

There would be no innacuracy or fumbling with the mouse. In contrast any other solution is going to be a lot harder!

Providing of course that it can be coded with .NET it would seem to be the ideal solution because it allows both TOTAL user ease, together with allowing for every possible angle value requred, with no innacuracy, or difficulties with rotating things with a mouse (which has got to be a computing nightmare!).

The only other question then becomes whether to go for this setting as being a per Deck setting or whether to take up the Motherpeace challenge and allow for that one card which is supposed to have 12 angular increments, the Astrological X Wheel of Fortune card, while all the rest have only four angular increments. Is the Motherpeace Deck worth the effort? I will let others argue that case. It is already popular.

However what I will say is that I think that allowing that possibility might well unleash a 'Flood' of creativity in terms of ideas for new Decks. If that did happen then people might see what we already know that Orphalese is the way forward.

Already there are many new Decks which are breaking with old norms and traditions. Let Orphalese be ahead of the pack not behind it! Let it be the ideal tool for Design and Creation.

Regards Greg the Yeti

[Programmer]

Hi Greg,

I am sure it would make a lot of sense according to your way of doing things, and that of many other users, but from my experience of working on this program I think another significant group of users would completely overlook the possibility of rotating cards if it depends on the keyboard. Using the keyboard is obvious and intuitive for power users or people who have been using computers for a good few years, i.e. before the mouse became popular, and they might even check to see what keyboard actions the program will respond to etc, but I don't think that goes for most users. The program lets you select cards, deal them, move them around (slow or fast), etc etc using the keyboard, but most users probably never discover that.

Another problem with the keyboard, because we are all so used to the idea of using the mouse (which gives focus to whatever you click on), is that the keyboard is only available to the window that has the focus. People get confused when their keyboards suddenly seem to stop working. Barbara just yesterday posted to the forum because the program seemed to have stopped responding to her keyboard (Hi Barbara, I am killing two birds with one stone here!). The reason for this will be that none of the windows in the tarot program are receiving key strokes. The most likely reason is that something else has taken the focus, e.g. your antivirus program tells you it has finished downloading the latest update or something similar, and after you click OK on that message the program is deaf to all your F keys. You need to click again on the deck or the background to get the program back into focus as far as keyboard messages are concerned.

Add to that the fact that many laptops don't respond to keyboard input in a conventional way, as far as numbers and arrows are concerned, and what you are left with is that the keyboard is a great way of doing things quick, but can't be the only way of getting anything done, at least in a program like this one which kind of invites people to think in terms of the mouse.

Be reassured though that whatever I get the program to do with the mouse, I will also try to do the same with the keyboard. And I like that battle cry too .-)

Cheers,
Richard

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi Richard,

If you've GOT to do this with the mouse then just don't forget my other point, which would apply just as much there as well.

If the 'Rotation Increment' was set up as 360/X, either in the Deck or on a per card basis, then that notoriously clumsy Mouse Rotation Control would become much easier. If the visible or invisible 'Rotation Handle' that you were dragging snapped to the preset points of the circle then more than half of the difficulty would disappear. Still more clumsy than the keyboard but probably more than acceptable. The only problem then would be to make sure of a good visible transition effect as the card 'snapped' from one Circle or Star Point to another.

OK if you found that the increment was not what you wanted then you would have to go and change the setting first. But the total advantages in terms of accuracy and ease and allowing for ALL possible divisions of the circle have got to outweigh that minor inconvenience!