Kepler 6.0

by Hank Friedman

The following are short sections from my Softstar News column on Kepler 6.0:

Kepler 6.0, from Cosmic Patterns, is a complete revamping of the user interface in Kepler. One of the most common criticisms of Kepler in years gone by was that while it kept growing in power, its user interface made it seem like an old DOS program instead of a Windows program. All of that has changed now.

Kepler 6.0's great new inter-face lift brings it into the 21st century. Entering charts is easier, and now you can use standard Windows pulldown menus and icons to select charts, maps, graphs, and interpretive reports, as well as to modify defaults, print or email output, etc. The program is much more interactive, e.g. when viewing a chart, you can change the aspect set or points shown and instantly see the changed chart. Customizing has become much easier, e.g. changing the size of charts, altering aspect orbs, etc. Among the many very significant enhancements is the ability to have the thickness of aspect lines change with orb, i.e. the stronger the aspect, the thicker the aspect line.

The AstroMaps functions have been augmented greatly. Kepler can now show Local Space, geodetic, and zodiac sign lines and includes a Paran listing. You can view and print larger maps, and after working with many maps, instantly return to any of the maps you created in the session. Each map shows many cities, and you can double the number of cities at the push of a button.

Kepler 6.0 includes many additional enhancements including a free numerology report, degree delineations for all chart points from 11 sources, more chart styles, point-and-click interpretations of planets by sign, and much more.

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Kepler 6.0 has many additional astro-mapping enhancements, including a tool to measure the distance between any two points (e.g. between two cities, or between a planet line and a city), and the ability to create predictive maps (which show the transiting or progressed or solar arc lines to the natal angles). You can also see a "live cursor", i.e. as you move your mouse over a map, it shows you the the longitude, latitude, ascendant, and midheaven changes as the pointer moves to new locations. You can now copy maps to the clipboard (for pasting into articles, letters, etc. in your word processor), save maps to files, and email maps. Map land and water colors can be changed, and maps print larger, too.

Even better, you can now generate astrolocality reports for any number of cities for a specific person's chart, interpreting the major and minor aspect lines and midpoint lines for each location (and the report indicates how strong each line's influence is). You can also simply point and click on any location to immediately see the influences on it. These are great new features. When you look at a chart wheel, you can point and click to see interpretations of planets in signs appear.

Kepler now also allows you to re-view any map, chart, report, or table you've created during a session. It creates a listing on the lower right of the screen and you just click on the item you want to see again, and it instantly reappears. Version 6 adds several new wheel choices, including three Huber-style wheels, and the ability to add the CoAscendant, Polar Ascendant, mean black moon Lilith, and true black moon Lilith into chart wheels.Finally, if you decide to resize a chart when you save it to a file

Kepler has added the ability to save sets of jobs (e.g. a set of charts, maps, reports, etc.) and apply them at a later date to other charts. This will automate and expediate your work with clients if you want a standard set of printouts for each. You can also easily create charts for planetary ingresses into signs and for lunations and eclipses.

Kepler 6.0 is a major, major upgrade. With its completely revamped user interface, powerful customizing features, new built-in interpretations, and phenomenal astromapping capabilities, Kepler 6 is a valuable set of tools for virtually every astrologer.

(Note: As I've mentioned in earlier articles, Cosmic Patterns, the creator of Kepler, has a unique upgrade policy: they upgrade any interpretive reports that you own for free every time you purchase an upgrade to Kepler. Most other companies charge for upgraded reports, sometimes as much as $100 per report!)

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