Comments by CharlesGilman
for Haiku Shogi (using the Spearman image for a multi-colourable Coppergeneral) I find that the orthogonals labelled 0 both get squashed. It happens even if I reduce the scale. Any ideas why that might be, and what to do about it?
Regarding Paolo's question, I e-mailed updates to old-style pages years ago that have still not been posted.
http://www.chessvariants.com/index/membersubmission2.php
It is worse than ever. This time all I get is a blank page, when trying to edit index information not just on that page but on any page of mine.
Of course I still have a few variants that do not suit this method of array presentation, and unfortunately but perhaps inevitably they are the ones that did not suit ffen diagrams either. Therefore I am still lumbered with a few actual single images. I am still minded to get rid of Square Versus Hex and Xiangcata on those among other grounds, if no-one calls for them to be retained. I am even wondering about Kennet, as suffragan bishops are a bit of a stretch and the variant is not really that distinctive of its setting. I have however managed to strip out such images in 3 player Honeycomb, Crouching Stepper Hidden Rider, Mixed Radial hex Chess, Heathen Europe Chess, and Yoto and as far as I am concerned the redundant image files can be deleted from the site. The space freed up should make it possible to add movement diagrams to my Man and Beast articles, and I can see a case for putting piece images on the index pages now that my choice of images is so much more distinct.
Another group of pages that I have been unable to edit are, of course, the ones predating post-your-own. It would be useful if an editor could use the new system to match with later variants (e.g. Magna Carta to use a subset of the piece images in 3d Magna Carta, Pink Panther of those in 2 Jewels, Mitregi of those in Mitregi with compounds of duals). On only one page, however, is it urgent to change the array diagram as it is currently misleading. This is Bachelor Kamil, which should have the array image:
I did wonder about turning it the other way, of incorporating text into multi-piece diagram. I realise, however, that it is not just a matter of putting the text in the rank labels as this would give problems if the text ran beyond the bottom of the neighbouring cell.
Thanks more to eliminating piece images and Ascii Art from my pages' Setup sections, these now have a uniform simplicity, making Pieces sections look untidy in comparison. It is true that my initial use of drawdiagram.php highlights the duplication, but replcing one long string of code with another doesn't really address the issue. In fact it would not increase code much to substitute a complete movement diagram for each piece in 2d variants ². Is it really impossible to devise a table with one column of images based on a single setting and one column of text - with the two lining up appropriately horizontally, of course?
True, the number of pieces is not on the same scale as the total number of cells in the array diagram. FIDE Chess has 6 as against 64, for example. It does however soon mount up. Shogi has 10 pieces, including promoted forms - and more if one distinguishes Goldgenerals resulting from different promotions. Yonin Toyang Mitregi ³ has 8 piece types that are always array ones, 2 that are array in one variant and promotee in the other, and 6 that are always promotee - 16 in all. In 3d it mounts up still further. Ladies and Generals ³, as an extrapolation of Okisaki to 3d - has 30 piece types, 17 array and 13 promotee, and showing the array piece and its promoted for run together is a significant code saving. Weltschach, as an attampt to square the FIDE back rank in composition as well as number, has 29 array pieces once differently-promotable Stockbrokers are distinguished - which they now are.
If there really isn't any way of streamlining the Pieces section, fair enough, but it would be good if someone (not necessarily the FD, but probably an editor) could design one.
¹ Once I have decided whether to discontinue Kennet, eliminating two further image files, I will issue a full list so that they can also be deleted from the CVP website.
² I would be interested to know whether other CVP participants would welcome such a change. It would make particular sense in Nimrod Chess, Hunterbeest, their Bachelor forms, and Westfield Chess.
³ Rerouting appears to have broken the traditional links to this page, but they can be found by clicking my name, "Items invented...", and the relevant initial letter.
What I meant by inefficient was the problems that I have learned always accompany duplicate code. Over the last few years one of my major tasks at work has been refactoring and centralising tracts of duplicate code. The issues that I know of are that duplication takes up more space, is more susceptible to errors such as typos, and makes extra work if a sudden change is made. The first two I can see applying similarly to substituting another long piece of code. Single-array page will certainly use a single piece set for the array diagram, piece images, and (if any) movement diagrams, and I find it hard to imagine even a multi-array page (be it 3d or multi-subvariant) doing otherwise.
If my idea really is impossible, say so and I will live with it, but don't suggest ways of addressing an imaginary time issue by doing something even more time-consuming.
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I tried to use shortcodes myself, and it seems to work within a comment, as follows:
It does not however seem to work on a post-your-own, as I tried using it to put a Bishop image beside the Bishop entry in Index B to Man and Beast and it showed the square brackets and their content rather than the image. Any idea why?
Yes, that seems to work. I have undone that single change so that I can add the whole set of images that I am using to the master copies offline and add them page by page rather than piece by piece.
Further to my previous comment, I have successfully applied shortcodes to Tee Garden Shogi, which I was rewriting anyway, and two of my memory-heaviest variants, Flipped-Return Nichtschach and Anglojewish Chess.
I have now used shortcodes to add piece images to all my index pages - and shorten the "Pieces" section on several of my variant pages as well. How this squares with the clause "I am not in support of your idea" <a href="http://www.chessvariants.com/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=32491">here</a> I am not entirely sure, as shortcodes fulfil the more basic of my suggestions completely.
We really do seem to have been talking at cross-purposes. All that I asked for was a result, not a particular means of achieving it, and I am just as pleased that you have you achieved it in the way that you liked as I would have been with any other way.
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