Homeopathic repertories use a stylised, structured representation of symptoms in the form of rubrics. This representation makes it easier to search for a rubric. This format has been carried over to the computer repertories too. I feel that representing rubrics in the natural text form would often make it easier to understand the meaning of the rubric. With advanced searching possibilities available in software, this should be fairly easy to implement and use. In fact, I think it would help a lot if explanatory notes can also be attached to rubrics, especially those that are difficult to understand.
When I started studying homeopathy many years ago, I referred to the following two books frequently to understand the meaning of mental rubrics (these are usually the most difficult):
1) David Sault, “A Modern Guide and Index to the Mental Rubrics of Kent’s Repertory”, Emryss bv Publishers, 1997.
2) Luis Detinis, “Mental Symptoms in Homoeopathy”, Beaconsfield Publishers Ltd., 1994.
Annotating rubrics with explanatory notes such as those found in the above books would be of great help to homeopaths (especially the beginners) when they use the homeopathic software.
In my iCure software, I experimented with the interesting idea of showing a rubric in the conventional (structured) form as well as in the equivalent natural form. One can easily switch between the two representations by pressing the F12 key.
The following figure shows the repertory screen with rubrics in the structured form.
Conventional form of rubrics
The following figure shows the same set of rubrics rendered in natural language form.
Rubrics in natural form
There was also a built-in dictionary to help in looking up difficult words. See below.
iCure Dictionary
I am hopeful that features such as these get into the mainstream homeopathic software of the future.
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