Morinus: excellent primary directions software!

[Martin Gansten]

It is often said that the best things in life are free. When it comes to primary directions software, it may even be true.

I have spent the last few weeks installing, testing and reviewing the primary direction modules of various software (as the very last bit for my forthcoming book), and I feel so enthusiastic about this excellent piece of freeware:
http://pymorinus.extra.hu/
that I wanted to make it known in advance here on Skyscript, particularly as the author of it is a member. Rob: if I had a hat, I'd take it off to you!

Of all the applications I have seen, including the most expensive and advanced, Morinus promises to become my favourite for primary directions. The calculations are, so far as I have had time to test them, absolutely correct; the range of choice is impressive; and there are promises of even more features for the next version, some of them, to the best of my knowledge, unique (such as lunar parallax correction and inclusion of the Moon’s secondary motion). I also particularly look forward to the choice of sidereal zodiac definitions, which will affect directions through the terms.

This is the software I will be recommending to my students.

[Martin Gansten]

Oh, and: it runs on Linux, Unix, Windows and MacOS platforms! (Though I have tested it only on Windows XP.)

[sasha_i]

Hello,

It's quite a very good astrology program.

Thanks Rob!

I have a small request, and please accept my apologies if it sounds ungrateful:
can you adapt the appearance options to allow us to put a background image?

Thanks again.

[Papretis]

[Martin Gansten]

[Astraea]

Thank you for this information, Martin, the program sounds wonderful - and of course thank you Rob, for writing it and making it freely available to us!

Is anyone using Morinus on a Mac? The download instructions seem quite complex to me because I don't have much of a computer background - I don't mind sorting through complexities, I'm just afraid of making a mistake and not knowing how to fix it. Or starting a download incorrectly, and not being able to stop it. Is the download pretty straightforward once it starts?

If I'm reading the instructions correctly, it is not strictly necessary to download the Swiss ephemeris files, as the Moshier ephemeris files are already present.

Also, there are instructions for determining whether or not Python is installed on one's machine for the Windows and Linux systems, but not Mac (unless I missed it) - so perhaps I could just check my fonts for that information?

[Graham F]

Hello
Martin, thanks very much for this link, and many to thanks to "robert.pluto" for making it available.
Just a question for those of us who are not very computer-literate. I don't understand the difference between binary and source installations. The source installation seemed very complicated, so I just tried binary, which installed so quickly I thought something must have gone wrong. I didn't check to see if I had Python on my computer, etc. Morinus seems to work fine. I'm using Vista.
Have I proceeded in the right way?
Many thanks
Graham

[Graham F]

Uhh...
I think I now understand. Binary means there's no installation, it just works direct from the source without installing. At any rate, it's now disappeared from my computer.
Graham

[rob]

Hi,

Thanks Martin for mentioning the program on this forum!
And, thanks Graham for sending me an email.
And finally: Thanks for your kind words!

To be honest I was thinking about stopping the development due to lack of interest(the features are enough for me ).

I am planning to implement the syzygy and mundane LoF next.
Hopefully it won't take more than a month.

The selectable background is a good idea. I added it to my TODO list.
All the features that are mentioned on the webpage will be implemented gradually.

Yesterday I uploaded the program twice because of a bug in the minor dignities dialog.
About pyhton(binary source):
The binary is the compiled source but their speed is the same because this binary is not a real one.
Python is an interpreted language so it is slower than native windows(or linux programs) (like the Kolev-Placidus).
When you run the source it first compiles the source code to bytecode and this bytecode is executed by the operating system. This is why it takes a few second for the program to start at the first time. Next time you start the program doesn't need to compile the bytecode again because it didn't change.

I have no acces to MacOS so I can't tell you much about it. The source should work.
The nice thing is that if you run the source there is no need to compile(the python interpreter will of course create the bytecodes when the program is run for the first time.)

regards,
rob(the programmer)

[Martin Gansten]

[rob]

[rob]

[rob]

[sasha_i]

It appears that it's not working

[rob]