testing horoscope program
Kees de Nobel
after implementing
/// type of inauspicious year from 1 to 18
/// 1 = accursed years
/// 2 = inauspicious years
/// 3 = six lesser stars
/// 4 = seven malign years
/// 5 = years of bad omen
/// 6= seven years of drought
/// 7 = 'heavenly' sentinel
/// 8 = 'earthly' sentinel
/// 9 = years promoting drought
/// 10 = four black undertakers
/// 11 = three soaring black sons
/// 12 = black fanged years
/// 13 = years susceptible to ogres
/// 14 = naked demons
/// 15 = 8 years endowed with the five elements
/// 16 = 10 years endowed with two elements
/// 17 = 8 years of widowhood
/// 18 = 8 orphan years
next to the already implemented
-nine Years Single Sign
-combined Nine Sign
-major Minor Tomb Sign
birthhoroscope pebble calculations up till examplary chart 4.8
I added facilities to add data for the father and the mother which is
needed for Natal horoscope.
I need someone ( or more ) who can check if the calculations are correct.
To do this I can send the current Horoscope program version where I have
included the data for the examples in WB.
I am surprised that I did not get a lot of remarks what was wrong and or
missing in the current version.
Finally I believe that once all features and calculations are
implemented there is not much of a need to make the calculations public
available as the onliest difference than is the user interface.
Who likes to have the new version ? ( Setup will overwrite the
previous installed version. )
Kees
Edward Henning
that you have provided nothing to comment upon. No source code. This
is an open source project, and as such can only progress when all
source code is made readily and freely available.
One thought in my earlier email concerned this. You have had many
questions answered, and I felt the answers are getting lost, in a maze
of older emails. In a project like this, the best preservation of such
information is in the form of properly commented source code. Then
there can be some feedback...
In particular, I do not understand this comment:
"...there is not much of a need to make the calculations public
available as the onliest difference than is the user interface."
The whole purpose of an open source project like this is to make
everything freely available to all. This enables people to give
feedback and help improve the software, and stops future writers from
having to re-invent the wheels that go to make up the software
project. If we make mistakes, others have the opportunity to correct
that work, and others have the opportunity to learn from and build on
that work. So, I cannot understand that comment at all...
Edward.
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "tibastro" group.
> To post to this group, send email to tiba...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> tibastro+u...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/tibastro?hl=en.
>
>
Chönyi
>
> "...there is not much of a need to make the calculations public
> available as the onliest difference than is the user interface."
>
> The whole purpose of an open source project like this is to make
> everything freely available to all. This enables people to give
> feedback and help improve the software, and stops future writers from
> having to re-invent the wheels that go to make up the software
> project. If we make mistakes, others have the opportunity to correct
> that work, and others have the opportunity to learn from and build on
> that work. So, I cannot understand that comment at all...
I totally agree with Edward on this point, especially since a big part
of what I learned on calendrical calculations and astrology was by
inspecting the source code! It's particularly important since the
documentation is quite hard to find and can let people with some
unanswered questions. With source code everything is clear and
unambiguous! The case of the Sherab Ling calendar is even more obvious:
the source code of Edward is the one and only documentation available...
Thank you,
--
Chönyi
Kees de Nobel
I thought I supplied many of you with a working ( not complete ) example
of a Tibetan Horoscope program for which I developed many calculations
and I also mentioned that I like to add as many features as I can. I
also mentioned that this program should be free for Tibetan monasteries
once finished. Looking into the calculations you need for what I am
doing right now ( Natal horoscope ) it will give results almost
immediately where otherwise you had to make manually many time consuming
calculations.
All calculations I have done are shown in the program and as I am almost
sure that there are not many software developers among the people in the
Tibastro group and certainly not C# developers making the calculation
code public at this time ( undocumented ) is a waist of what I have done
already.
The source code for the calculations without an interface is nothing as
you cannot check what the calculation is doing.
It's like trying to read a book in a language you do not understand.
It's even worse as many calculations depend on other calculations and
you do need to understand the dependency.
What you normally do in software development is writing serious test
cases and that's what I ask as only feeding the testdata into a program
will show you if the program is correct.
E.g. I feed the data you supply in your book into the program to see if
I have the same results ( I expect these data is correct ). I also feed
the data in the White Beryl into the program and find many errors in the
WB. I mention these and try to get good test data.
When I am not sure about what is described I try to get the information
to get correct results.
As a matter of fact when you develop a library, the user of this
library, is normally not interested how everything works inside only in
the results ( a programmer believes that the functions which are offered
are correct ).
So I will continue what I am doing even when there is no help.
I expected to get more feedback to develop what I try to do making a
serious Tibetan Horoscope program giving the user the possibility to
enter the data which is needed for the calculations and to have a report
writer showing the results with editing facilities.
If this is not what you and maybe other people expected I am sorry but
that is what I want to have ( I am working on this already for a long
time ).
Kees
Op 2011-07-11 20:35, Edward Henning schreef:
Edward Henning
collaborative open source project, in which all source code is freely
shared? In my original email to you informing you of this project I
wrote, introducing Chonyi:
"He has an account on github, which is the main repository used for
collaborative open source projects. I suppose the first question would
be if you know of any others who would be in a postion to contribute
to such a project?"
And yet you are now saying that you do not want to contribute source
code? I don't want to get into a discussion on the relative merits of
open versus closed source development - that is my day job, after all
- but the intention of this project has been from the beginning open
source only...
Edward.
Chönyi
> If I read you correctly, you actually do not wish to be part of a
> collaborative open source project, in which all source code is freely
> shared? In my original email to you informing you of this project I
> wrote, introducing Chonyi:
>
> "He has an account on github, which is the main repository used for
> collaborative open source projects. I suppose the first question would
> be if you know of any others who would be in a postion to contribute
> to such a project?"
>
> And yet you are now saying that you do not want to contribute source
> code? I don't want to get into a discussion on the relative merits of
> open versus closed source development - that is my day job, after all
> - but the intention of this project has been from the beginning open
> source only...
Hello,
I have the same feeling as Edward: the main of the project is to have
open source and documented code, for the following reasons (and many
others):
- for newcomers who are developers to learn and verify the calculation
algorithms
- for our work not to be lost when we'll all be gone, so that tibetans
will always be able to use it if they want, whatever the future in
computers (who knows what will become of C# .exe files in the future?
code will always be usable)
- because there are as many uses as there are users, and people will
certainly want things we don't even think about, like a proof of the
algorithms by writing all the intermediate calendrical calculations in
tibetan, with the traditional references of every calculations for
instance...
- to let tibetans explore, translate and modify the code if they are
not sure of a result
- to have a good open-source library for tibetan calendrical
calculations that may be, in the future, the standard for integration of
tibetan calendar in OSs (Linux, Mac, BSD, etc.)
- for users to be able to add their own secret, strange or very
specific astrological or calendrical algorithms (there are certainly
more than we currently imagine) in a documented and structured code
- for me to be able to make a LaTeX or XML custom output to
automatically produce our future paper almanach (if it ever comes), with
the precise informations I need...
- last but not least: for people like me who'll never trust a software
(especially about astrology) for which they don't have the source code...
For all these reasons, I find Kees' software good and useful, but I
still think we need something really open and shared.
Thank you,
--
Chönyi
ogyen
I'm sorry for my long silence in the group, I've been quite busy since
we started and inaugurated this new Palpung astrological and medical
school in Sherabling. I'm supposed to teach the astrology there, while
Dr. Sonam Rinchen while take on the medicine part. Anyways, we've
started with a preparatory year during which the emphasis is made on
Tibetan language: grammar, poetry, prose and ... translation from
English! On top of my own studies, I have currently 4 classes a day to
teach, that doesn't leave me much time to participate as much as i
would wish to.
Regarding the question of open-source programs, I understand the point
of Kees but I support what Edward and Chonyi wrote. If we want to
accomplish something together, we have to share a similar ultimate
view or goal. I already wrote a lot on the goals I wanted to reach
with this project, but I think I could summarize them in 3 points:
1. Preserving astrological knowledge in time by translating the
meaning of all major texts into code (scholars able to interpret
astrological treatises are extremely rare nowadays... but this could
change with code)
2. Creating a meeting point for traditional Tibetan and western
scholars in the form of a forum containing detailed and annotated
bilingual descriptions of all major calculations, together with a chat-
room for debates etc... (for me this is the only way to give a chance
to this science to evolve)
3. Providing to anyone interested an accurate description of the
calculations together with accurate code for these, free of charge.
All this will only be possible with open-source, and if we all are
romantic enough in what motivates us to spend time together. By
romantic, I mean doing things only for the sake of the Dharma and
sentient beings. If we all share this motivation and have the same
goal, there shouldn't be any problem. That's more or less how I
presented things to Jampa, Sonam Rinchen and Tsewang. If some of us
have different or more personal goals, we should readjust the way we
work.
To be sincere, I first started to learn C# with these very aims in the
head, then when seeing people like Kees and Chonyi were on the job i
thought that after-all I'd better spend my time studying texts...
Anyways I'm quite confident that we all, Kees included, share the same
view and motivation, this just needs to be clarified a bit!
Cheers!
tenzang.
Chönyi
> To be sincere, I first started to learn C# with these very aims in the
> head, then when seeing people like Kees and Chonyi were on the job i
> thought that after-all I'd better spend my time studying texts...
From my point of view this is certain! Coding is something anyone can
do as long as we have good sources, but finding and studying texts,
being in contact with expert tibetan astrologers, etc. is something very
few people can do and you are one of these; this is precious and coding
would certainly be a waiste of time for you.
The best thing (still from my own point of view) would be for you to
constitute a base of traditional texts (in Tibetan for now) describing
calculations and interpretation for the Sherab Ling astrology and
calendar system, as there is no such thing right now... A database of
traditional texts (if they're not on TBRC) for all systems would also be
a very good thing!
If you find technical limitations to create such a database, please tell
me and I'll set something up... a CMS like Plone is something I can
install on a public server for example.
Thank you,
--
Chönyi
Michael Erlewine
I am not Tibetan or a wise old Tibetan astrologer. I am just a western
astrologer who is now old. I will be 70 in a few days. Putting aside how we
preserve Tibetan astrology for a moment, I am in a position to tell you
something about how programming and sharing astrology in general came about.
When I started out, all astrology was done with paper, pencil, and log
tables. There were no computers. Not only were there no computers, there was
not even a single 4-function calculator available. This was true in the
1950s (and before), through the 1960s, and all the way to around 1972, which
was the year that 4-function calculators (add, subtract, multiply, and
divide) became available.
The first thing I did was to publish (publically) how to use those
4-function calculators to automate log tables, etc., and all the other
calculations we astrologers did. Next came programmable calculators and
Hewlett-Packard published programs I did in a small book. I received nothing
for this. Meanwhile I established a group of astrologers interested in
calculations (much like this group) and published "Matrix Journal," in which
we shared all the emerging algorithms with all interested, things like
various planetary algorithms, etc. Everything was open source and shared. It
was imperative because there were so few of us and the need was so great.
In 1977 when the first home computers came out, I programmed the first
complete program (geo, helio, equatorial, azimuth & altitude, etc.) in 8K of
RAM, which is all that my Commodore PET computer had. and I began sharing
this with my fellow astrologers. I did not even charge anything for my
programs until all I was doing was sending out programs all day on cassettes
(verifying tapes). There were no disks or hard drives for home computers at
the time. Back then I had to load floating point calculations by tape into
computers like the Apple II, etc. before I could program. And a business
grew out of this, but my sharing algorithms and helping others did not harm
business. My company, Matrix Software, is still alive and going and the only
software company older on the Internet is Microsoft.
My first printer was a used Teletype machine that weighed 70 lbs and I had
to write my own word processing routines for type justification to publish
my book "Programming Manual for Astrologers," and so on. You get the idea.
Although I was not as fortunate as some of you to learn from the Tibetan
astrologers until much later, I did what I could to further protect and
preserving the Tibetan methods. My point?
Life is short. We need to gather, compare, and share this material with one
another and with the world. Any of us with a grain of creativity can make
personal programs that shine based on shared resources. I have done all this
before and I don't feel that by sharing I lost anything. In fact, I only
gained from sharing with others.
And as some of you have pointed out here, if we actually are also
practitioners (which is what all this Tibetan astrology is about) then
sharing is something that we want to do.
Thanks,
Michael Erlewine
Director Matrix Software
Http://www.AstrologySoftware.com
Phone/Fax: 231 796-6532
Email: Mic...@Erlewine.net
Current Projects: Http://www.StarTypes.com
Blogs: http://www.facebook.com/MichaelErlewine
Photography: http://macrostop.com/
Free Astrology: http://www.astrologyland.com/
Free Books: http://www.astrologysoftware.com/books/
Apps From Mobile Devices: http://www.astrologyland.com/
MotherShip: http://www.astrologysoftware.com/
Founder and developer of:
Matrix Software (AstrologySoftware.com), All-Music Guide (allmusic.com),
All-Movie Guide (allmovie.com), All-Game Guide, ClassicPosters.com,
StarTypes.com, FolkUnion.com, Heart Center Recording Studios, Astrology
Dialogs (ACTastrology.com), MacroStop.com (photography), Astrologyland.com
(fun), StarTypes.com
Edward Henning
systems would also be a very good thing!>>>
I have a collection of al the main texts, which I gave to Tenzang over
a year ago. It has been added to since then (and probably needs
tidying up). These are all from the TBRC collection - Tenzang and I
both lent texts to TBRC for scanning. so, if anybody needs anything,
it may well be sitting here...
Edward.