Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

Hi, all:

I've been using this program as a learning tool for some time now, and have a question or two about spreads:

1. Can one produce circular spreads with this program, and if so, exactly how?
(I've gotta confess, I'm all thumbs when it comes to computers--please go easy on me). A good while back, I read a monograph on circular spreads, which sounded rather cool, with 12 cards arranged in a radial fashion, and would like to try to recreate these with the Orphalese Program. How about any off-axis or sidways positioning of cards (I can provide template diagrams, I think, if necessary).

2. I've tried a couple of times to download spreads from within the program today, since now (by way of a gifting) I am the proud owner of a registered version. I seem, however, to be getting exactly nowhere with that one, as well.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

CJ

Hi CJ,

Thanks for posting. This request, for the program to be able to show cards at an angle other than perpendicular, comes up with quite a bit of frequency. I would go so far as to say it is the single most requested thing that the program doesn't do at the moment.

The problem is that each card you see in the program is a "window" in it's own right, and windows only come in one shape - rectangular, and at one angle, perpendicular. The best way to demonstrate this is to turn off the background on the main menu - you will see that deck appears on top of any other programs you might have running. This has a lot of advantages in terms of making the cards and deck easy to move and so on, but it has the limitation I just mentioned about shape.

You might be thinking about some program or other that you run that doesn't have a rectangular window. For example, Windows Media Players lets you choose a "skin" that is an irregular shape. The trick is that the shape is drawn on to a normal rectangular window, but some bits around the edges are transparent, which gives the illusion. In fact the program can already do this - you can use circular decks etc, but most of the program's features work on the assumption of upgright, rectangular cards on the screen. I would have to change the way spreads work, the way "screen capture" tool works, the way readings are saved and so on, and this would involve quite a bit of work.

What I envisage at the moment is that this would be the basis for the next big version increment, i.e. to version 9.0 of the program. I don't have any plans to start trying to code it now or in the near future though, because I just finished a big set of changes to the program and it is time to concentrate on other aspects, like getting the help file up to date (transferring it to a wiki, in fact) as well as the various foreign language versions of the program.

When I do start thinking about it I will post in here a long way in advance. New versions of the program always go through quite a long beta testing phase, where users can download and try out the prototype. Anyone who is interested in keeping up to date with the program's development can subscribe to the General Discussion thread by following the link at the bottom of that page. Then you will receive an email notification if there are any announcements about new features etc.

Cheers,
Richard