Proposal for design of Jhora's preferences

[Guest guest]

Dear PVR,

 

Thank you and congratulations on your releasing of version 7.3.

 

I would like to make a proposal regarding the design of Jhora's

preferences.

 

Current Design : Not possible to see and change all the preferences on

one screen. This increases the probability of user error especially when

more and more options are available with each subsequent Jhora release.

 

Proposed Design : In the Basics tab area, split the top half into 2

columns, i.e. making this tab area look like the four-quadrant design of

the Miscellany tab area.

 

The planetary information is shown in the top left quadrant. The

preferences are shown in the top right quadrant.

 

Better still if possible, in this preferences quadrant, the actual

preferences can be changed directly (via drop-down boxes, check boxes,

.... etc).

 

The preferences should be listed from top to bottom according to

potential impact on calculations and chart interpretation.

 

Also related to this proposed design, an option to print all the

preferences in 1 or 2 pages.

 

The following are my thoughts leading to this proposal. Feel free to

stop reading now and ignore it if it does not stir your interest.

 

 

**********************************

 

1) Time is a very precious commodity. Given a choice, I assume you will

always use your limited Jhora programming time to implement new features

or update existing ones than creating fancy, eye-candy only user

interfaces.

 

The proposal I have mentioned is not about pretty-looking user interface

designs which serve no meaningful purpose.

 

On the contrary, it is about minimising wrong interpretations due to

user error which can give the user or Jhora or worse, Jyotisa itself a

bad reputation as more and more people are making the decision to use

Jhora only. Thus, I hope this proposal is worthy of your serious

consideration.

 

As we have observed over the years in various forums, almost 90% of

complains about Jhora giving an " error " is due to the difference between

the ayanamsa type preferred by the user and Jhora's default ayanamsa.

This can be also due to differences between default ayanamsa of

different Jhora versions (though it is less likely to happen from 7.3

onwards). And also when research-oriented individuals experiment with

different ayanamsas and forgetting to change it back to their preferred

one when they return to their serious, non-experimenting chart reading

frame of mind.

 

If the name of the ayanamsa can be relatively prominently displayed in

Jhora requiring minimum or zero mouse-clicking or dragging effort, there

is a high chance the users themselves will realise the error quickly and

correct it accordingly before it is too late.

 

Currently, only the value of the ayanamsa is shown in the basic tab and

not the type. And the user will most probably have to scroll all the way

down in the bottom left quadrant to notice the change in value (if they

know it can be found there).

 

In the printouts, no reference of ayanamsa type or value can be found,

 

Extend the same logic to Sunrise definition, Chara Karakas, definition

of year in dasas, Ashtakavarga, ...etc and you can understand the scope

of the positive impact of a change in preferences design as proposed.

 

2) The main idea for the proposed design came from observing the design

of the existing Tithi Pravesha, Mundane and Micellany tabs which proves

that technically you should have already acquired the necessary

programming skills and knowledge to create 4 quadrant tabs which

supports an integration of check boxes, drop-down boxes and

command-activating buttons.

 

I am not a Visual Basic programmer. I can understand it is very absurd

and naive for someone with little programming knowledge to request a

seasoned programmer to change his software as if it is a very easy thing

to do. If you feel that is the situation I am in right now, I hereby

sincerely apologise to you.

 

Looking forward to 7.4 and your TP book.

 

Have a nice weekend.

 

Best Wishes,

Pushya