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About this pageThis document provides details on the use of the "Edit Cards and Text" page. It is assumed that you have a basic understanding of card mapping and the terminology used within it. If you don't, you might wish to read the Card Mapping Tutorial before proceeding.
The Edit Cards and Text page enables you create or modify the text and cards associated with a map, or to delete a map altogether. If you want to create a new map using the default layout, you can direct your browser to this page using the "Create a new map using default layout" link on the main menu. Alternatively, you could come to this page by clicking the "Edit cards and text", "New map with this layout", or "New map with this layout and cards" links on the home page of an existing map.
You cannot change the layout of a map from this page. To change the layout of an existing map, click the "Edit layout" link on the map's home page.
Each map can have a title and a description. To give the map a title, type text into the Title box. The title is limited to 80 characters. On the map home page, the title is displayed in large type at the top of the page as well as in the browser's title bar. Titles are also used to identify maps on the Map Index page.
The Description block provides an area where you can enter free-form comments describing the map. The description can contain many thousands of characters, but the text editing capabilities of the input block are primitive, so you will probably want to keep it fairly brief. On the map home page, the description is displayed in smaller type just below the title. The description will be formatted just as you type it in terms of line breaks and indentation.
Beneath the Title and Description text boxes you will see the layout of slots defined for your map, or, if you have not defined a layout, the default layout of 10 slots in a horizontal row. All 91 pattern cards also appear on the page in thumbnail image format. When the page is first loaded, each card will either be in a slot (if you have previously saved the map with cards in slots) or in one of several "piles" beneath the slots. In this document, cards that are not in slots will be called "free" cards, and slots that do not have a card in them will be called "free" slots.
By default, the cards in piles are shown in alphabetical order, but you can change it to alphabetical order within categories by changing the setting of the "Sort" selector in the controls area beneath the Description box. When the cards are sorted by category, small black tick marks on the right side of the piles mark the first card of each category. When you save a map, the sort order is also saved in a cookie on your computer (assuming you have set your browser to permit cookies). The next time you visit the Edit Cards and Text page, the initial sort order will be the same as the last time you saved. Note that the initial sort order is treated as a personal preference associated with your computer; it is not associated with a particular map.
You can move the cards around by dragging them with the mouse. You can drop them anywhere you like for inspection and contemplation, but the only place they will make any difference to the defined map is in a slot. Free cards will not be included in the map when it is saved. To place a card in a free slot, drag it so that some part of the card covers the center of the slot, then release the mouse. The card should "snap" into place in the slot.
A card will not snap into a slot that already has another card in it. You must first move the other card out of the slot and drop it somewhere else on the page.
On a small screen, dragging cards to slots can be tedious, often involving one or more stops to scroll the screen. As an alternative, you can move any free card from any location into the next free slot by clicking on the card while holding down your keyboard's Ctrl key.
The "next" free slot means the next one in order of original slot creation. So in the default layout, the slots are simply filled from left to right. If you create a non-linear layout, ctrl-clicking cards will still fill the slots as if they were in their original left-to-right order, and you must take this into account if you care in what order the rearranged slots are filled. For example, if you wanted a diamond-shaped layout that would be filled in the order North-East-South-West, then on the Edit Layout page you would need to arrange the first four slots as shown below.
To facilitate tarot-like uses of the program, a Deal button is provided in the controls area. If this button is clicked when there are free slots in the map, a free card is chosen at random and placed in the next free slot. You can click the button repeatedly until all slots are filled.
You can return a card to its "home" location in the piles by dragging it near that location. When you release the mouse, the card should snap into its place. You can automatically return all free cards to their home locations by clicking the Clear button in the controls area.
When you have finished editing your map you will probably want to save it to the database. To save the map, click the Save button in the controls area. After storing the map in the database, the system will display the map home page. You will probably want to bookmark this page if you have not done so before.
You do not have to finish defining your map before saving it; you can save it with blank Title and/or Description boxes and any or all of the slots empty. You can then come back and finish defining the map later.
Be aware that if you abandon the Edit Cards and Text page without saving, any changes you made will be lost.
Operations that modify the database, such as Save, require that you be logged in to the groupworksdeck.org site. If you are modifying an existing map, you must be logged in as the owner (creator) of that map. See the Card Mapping Tutorial page for a detailed discussion of user authentication as it applies to card mapping. If you are not authorized to save the map you are viewing, the Save button will be disabled.
If you are viewing a previously existing map and wish to delete it from the database, click the Delete button in the controls area. You will be prompted to confirm that you want to delete. If you click OK, the map will be deleted and you will go to a blank Edit Cards and Text page. Deletion of a map is irreversible.
You must be logged in as the owner of a map in order to delete it. If you are not, the Delete button will be disabled. The button is also disabled if you are creating a new map that has never been saved to the database.
The image will always be "on top", covering any other displayed elements occupying the same area. If it is in an inconvenient location, you can drag it to a better one.
Double-clicking the larger image, in turn, will open a new browser window or tab (depending on your browser and its settings) showing the full groupworksdeck.org web page for the pattern represented by the card, including a comprehensive description, examples, and other resources.
You can double-click another card to replace the larger image with a different one, or click the X at the upper right of the image to dismiss it.
