Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

One thing I'd like to see is the ability to lock the card size for specific decks.

As it is now, if I change the size, every deck I have in Orphalese gets changed in size (unless I've missed something.)

Hi Jambalaya,

This is an interesting request, it has never come up before. Of course, the program doesn't actually alter the size of any of the decks, it just displays them in a smaller or larger window on screen. The assumption I originally made is that people would adjust the display size according to their screen resolution, and would only need to change it when displaying a spread that has a lot of cards in it (so as to get them all on the screen). Maybe it is me that is missing something, but is there a reason for wanting to preconfigure different display sizes for each deck in your collection?

It occurs to me that one reason you might want this is you perhaps didn't realise that the plus and minus keys can be used to fine tune the size of the cards on screen. I can see that making small adjustments when switching decks would be annoying if you were trying to always do it through the options form. Is this the case?

Cheers
Richard

Hi Richard,

Yes, I use the plus and minus signs, and never use the options form.

I know the program doesn't alter the size of the decks and it is only adjusting the display. I am very experienced with graphics programs and resolution.

Regardless of my screen resolution, the cards are different sizes and shapes and also scanned at different resolutions. So, as you have stated, when using spreads with more cards, people often adjust the size.

However, you are forgetting about customization of spreads for particular decks. If I have one deck sized smaller because I use a specific 10-card spread with it, why should any other decks be affected by that? They shouldn't, but at the present thay are.

I have some cards sized large so that I can see the details when I do single or 3-card spreads, why should every deck in my Packs folder be affected by that? They shouldn't, but at the present thay are.

Sorry Richard, I think you ARE missing something, and I am entirely puzzled why this hasn't come up. Why should I need to reinvent the wheel every time I load a deck? I should have the option to set the default card size and the spread that comes up with each deck, in the same way that I can now customize the card back and background to default settings.

It makes logical sense.


J.

Here are a couple of concrete examples for you Richard. Perhaps I simply use the program differently than other people.

1) I have the Campos Questions Deck which I find charming and useful. I made a customized background for it and a customized card back with predominant colours from the deck, and I very happily was able to set those up as defaults.

The point of this deck is to draw ONE card and get your question and then do a spread with another deck, so I will obviously be switching decks. No problem, BUT I want that Questions Deck to be pretty large in card size, and I might be using a card deck for the spread that needs different settings depending on how many cards in the spread and depending on the original resolution of the scans or images.

The Questions Deck is pretty low res, so I can't get it too big, but why is my viewing adjustment affecting every other pack in my folder? It really shouldn't.

These are individual decks, scanned at different resolutions and obviously optimized at disparate sizes that need customization when viewing. The logical step is to program something for the user to set up a suitable viewing setting as a default for EACH deck.

2) I often use single cards from different decks as clarifying cards for a reading. Again, to see a clarifying card I have to bump the screen size up or down to see the image properly, and then I switch back to the other deck and I'm bumping up or down again and on and on it goes.

Why? If I have a hundred packs I don't want to be manually switching options for them every time I load them, when I could set up a default for viewing each one of them. Take it further and allow a default spread to be chosen and there is no longer continual tweaking and endless adjustment of viewing size needed. If you switch to another spread, say a new favourite, then you load it in as a default for the specific deck, and set the appropriate viewing size as a default and it does NOT affect every other pack in the folder.

Maybe I'm weird, but it makes perfect, logical sense to me.

J.

Hi Jambalaya

I think I see what you are getting at now.

Recently I have been working quite a lot on how spreads work and how readings should work. At the moment the program has a kind of built in absurdity that when you deal out a reading the pixel co-ordinates are absolute (so if a person with 1024 x 768 resolution sent a reading to a person with 800 x 600 resolution it could be off the screen). Spreads use a different system altogether - at the moment when someone creates a spread they specify how high and wide the spread is, which is used to divide the screen into a kind of grid. Then they can specify (by dragging the cards in the wizard or by editing the spread file) an offset against that. Obviously these two approaches are incompatible, and neither of them are ideal.

I am hoping to upload the beta 6.5 tomorrow. In the new version readings and spreads work in the same way: both record a preferred size for the deck in question. The size of the deck is stored as a floating-point decimal that just records the ratio of the card height to the screen height. Also, all screen co-ordinates are stored as decimal fractions of the height and width of the screen, so the display should work equally well when shared between monitors.

The way I have programmed things in the beta is that when laying out a spread the program resizes the cards only when they are smaller than those specified in the spread file (which may be a conversion from opening an earlier spread in the new way - this conversion process itself will require quite a bit of testing).

Tomorrow I will work through the example in your second email with the new beta and see if the new format means the cards resize correctly. Re changing the program, my instinct is that this is something which it ought to be able to handle for itself, without the user having to set hard-coded sizes for each deck.

I would be really grateful if you could install the beta when you get the chance (I hope to release it this weekend) and give me your feedback.

Cheers
Richard

Great, I will gladly install and try the beta.

And that's why programmers are artists. They can see how to do things in relation to other things that aren't apparent to someone like me.

I have done work for five years for another programmer, and he will speak about relative things like you are doing to me OR he will say he's set something up a certain way in order to allow for options in later versions of the program.

You're the man, you've got the vision, as long as I can get options that work a bit better for me I am happy!

Thanks

Since I'm incidentally cited on this post, I would like to give an opinion, if you don't mind, because I see the point on both sides of this thread:

-I agree with J that a size per deck option will be ideal, if you can declare a certain size for some choice decks. I also see Richard's objection against this. because if I must declare a preferred size for everyone of the 320 decks I have now installed... boy, this is going to be real boring! That's why I want to suggest two new radio buttons on Change Settins For XXX Only: Default Size (the one already decided on the program) or Custom Size, defined by user by some means. A pair of arrows for Bigger/Smaller will do, and instruct program to remember this per deck setting. Everyone happy on this scenario, right? Me for sure.

-As for the resolution of the Questions Deck (and some others by Yours Truly), I've always worked on deck construction keeping in mind A) Accomodation of spreads and high number of cards on screen B) Lousy or smal graphic sources and C) Final size of the resulting ZIP file. But this was before the WPCM frenzy, the scan-the-bigger-the-better and some other approaches to deck assembly. Still I stick to these rules because they make sense to me. Believe me when I say it is more difficult to make a small deck than a big one. For example, fitting so much detail and elements on every card of the Albareda Tarot was a true challenge. I consider the Questions medium size from this point of view. Best regards.

Yes, I think Richard also was cognizant of the fact that not everyone likes to tweak these settings, or even know that they're there. I like the idea of the extra choice of custom size for the detail-minded types like me with more experience.

My comment on the resolution wasn't meant as a criticism of you, simply an acknowledgement of the limitations with my monitor. It's a ** LCD model and has to be set at 1280 x 1024 resolution for reasons of clarity, which leaves me hampered sometimes. One of the decks under Other Decks had a lot of writing on it and I simply had no way of reading it on this monitor. I don't know if that constitutes a high res. frenzy or merely the acknowledgement of problems encountered running a monitor at high res. by necessity

I understand the problems of computer graphics and designing with detail and resolution in mind, it's something I deal with regularly.

I won't be comfortable in commenting further. Do what you want, that's the joy of life!

I know it wasn't criticism, just a general statement, thx for your input. The idea is launched, so the rest is up to Richard. Best.

Hi Guys,

Just to say I have been working flat out on the next update of the beta and I just uploaded it now. Unfortunately I didn't get around to looking at this particular request but it will be in the next update. I figured it is also not a good idea to make too many changes at once, from the point of view of debugging.

Cheers
Richard