Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

Hi There,

First of all just wanted to say thanks for developing Orphalese which is such a great piece of software. For some reason I am not able to launch an extra deck. It doesn´t matter whether I try to do it from the utilities tab or use the keyboard shortcut. I´m using version 8.11.3.1 on Windows 7 Professional.

I can sometimes see a small deck on the bottom left hand side of the sceen however it is greyed out and clicking on it brings up no options etc. I should add that currently the version I´m using is unregistered so I´m not sure whether the extra deck option is only available for resitered users (I do intend by the way on registering the software).

Thanks.

Hi Tarotmundo,

OK, first of all the Extra Deck function should be available to everyone, so it is nothing to do with not being registered.

The current version of the program is 8.12, so the first thing I would recommend is that you get the latest version. There have been lots of small improvements and bug fixes since 8.11. A couple of the bugs did involve the second deck (for example there was a problem in 8.11 with the second deck not showing the right notes). It also includes a completely updated Help file.

There might be a clue in what you say about the rectangle in the bottom left. This is an area for "parking" the deck. The idea is that if you have a lot of cards out you might want to hide the deck to reduce screen clutter. If you move the deck over that square it disappears - it is kind of like it gets "minimized" into the square. You can bring it back by clicking the square. I suggest you try it a couple of times with a single deck to see how it works. What might be happening is that the second deck is appearing, but it is appearing directly over this "parking" square, so it is falling straight into it.

...In fact I have just tried this now and I have discovered a bug - if a secondary deck falls into that square it just disappears and you can't get it out! Now I am starting to feel quite certain this is what is happening with you. Until I manage to fix this bug the answer might be to have the first deck as far away from that square as possible when you launch the second deck.

Cheers,
Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your quick response which I appreciate. Following your advice I have now updated to version 8.12 although unfortunately I am still experiencing the same issue. I made sure to keep the deck away from rectangle in the bottom left when trying to launch the extra deck but still no luck.

Whenever I attempt to launch the extra deck, either by using the keyboard shortcut or via the utilities tab the small Windows circle appears and flickers for a fraction of a second as if to acknowledge that it is processing the request however nothing actually happens.

The only default setting I have altered is the background as I prefer a white background but just to make sure that this in some way was not interfering with things I changed it back to the default background. However this did not make a difference.

I also have a mac with parallels and installed the latest version of Orphalese. Even on the mac as on the pc I am not able to launch an extra deck. I do have an extra netbook and what I just may have to do is run two versions of Orphalese simultaneously, one on my main pc and one on the netbook just as a work-around in the meantime.

Thanks Richard for your suggestions.

This has got me a bit stumped at the moment, especially because I can't reproduce the problem. I have even uninstalled it on my machine and downloaded it again from the web, but the extra deck feature still works. It does sound from the way you describe it that the program tries to launch the second deck, works for a bit, and then encouters some error.

The second deck is intially the same deck as the first one (i.e. if you are using the Traditional Tarot then the Traditional Tarot is used for the second deck, after that you can change it). If you haven't tried already maybe you could try it with a different deck loaded up to begin with. It might just be that the problem is related to a specific deck.

Another thing you could look for is whether the program has produced an "Errors.txt" file in the program directory. Sometimes this happens, in which case you could send me the contents of that file. If the file is there, the best thing would be to try to launch a second deck again, then close the program. That way the any error in launching the second deck would be the last line in the Errors file.

At the moment that is about all I have. The next step would be for me to build another version of the program which tries very hard to catch and record what his happening around the point where the second deck fails to appear. I need to get another version out to fix that bug with the "parking" square anyway. I am not going to have any spare time for at least a couple of weekends, but I will post back here when I have something.

I have just uploaded a new version (8.12.1.7) which fixes the bug of extra decks being able to fall into the "parking" rectangle and also should give a clear, visible error message if there is a problem launching the second deck. Tarotmundo, maybe when you have a moment you could give it a try with this new version? Of course, if any other user sees this message, please post to the Forum and I will to work out what is going wrong here. Thanks!