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It can handle hexagonal boards and custom boards with spaces arranged in a grid, but I have not added in code for circular boards or for custom boards with custom spaces.
Sorry, I knew about that. I meant HG's interactive diagram :)! And thanks for the info :)!
Is it possible to adjust the number of ranks and files, on the board, independently? I can't figure out how to increase the number of ranks without decreasing the number of files, and vice verse.
The diagram designer has a columns option. That is in relationship with the fen code where the number of blank spaces and pieces added up give the total board size.
Is it possible to use other pieces from the alfaerie set than those 26 which are displayed and acessible by one letter? I tried around with braces, e.g. {squirrel} or {bsquirrel.gif} but it doesn't work.
Yes, just change the set being used. The Alfaerie pieces are not a single set. There are multiple sets that use Alfaerie pieces. To change to another set using Alfaerie pieces, you will need to change the Set Group first. You may select "All" for a complete listing of all sets, or you may select a specific group of sets. The Automatic group contains script generated sets of all images in the same style, and each set in it bases labels on file names. The other groups contain manually written sets using more abbreviated labels. When you change the set, each piece in the new set will show up on the page with the label you need to use for it. Note that all pieces you use must be from the same set. Besides the Automatic sets, the "Alfaerie: Many" set will contain all or most Alfaerie pieces with short, but frequently cryptic, labels. Depending on what pieces are in your game, you might find a smaller set that includes them all.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Aug 28, 2020 07:31 PM UTC:Some piece sets will not work with the diagram designer for some reason, including sets that work fine with game courier.
For example, change the piece set to Alfaerie for Grand Betza. All the pieces show correctly, but the board produces a bad link. But here is a Game Courier preset that uses that same set and works fine:
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Betza&settings=standard
Whatever it is is not related to the PNG graphics. There are other piece sets that have this problem also.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Aug 28, 2020 09:53 PM UTC:Ah! I think I found the commonality...
The Diagram Designer does not work if the name of the set contains the word "for", such as "Alfaerie for Bifold Chess". Must be a reserved word that is not being escaped somewhere.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Sep 18, 2020 04:22 PM UTC:Some piece sets still won't render a board with diagram designer although all the individual pieces show correctly. My earlier speculation that it involves sets with "for" in the title appears to be incorrect, or there is more to it. The ones that fail all seem to have "for" in the name, but some others containing "for" do work.
Also, in Game Courier, if there is only one square color, it will draw outlines around the squares as shown in this preset: https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DMaorider+Chess%26settings%3Ddefault But Diagram Designer doesn't do this. It just shows a solid board with nothing to separate the squares.
Also, in Game Courier, if there is only one square color, it will draw outlines around the squares as shown in this preset: https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DMaorider+Chess%26settings%3Ddefault But Diagram Designer doesn't do this. It just shows a solid board with nothing to separate the squares.
That's a feature of the Table rendering method, which the Diagram Designer does not use. Game Courier does not do this for the GIF, JPG, or PNG methods.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Sep 18, 2020 08:31 PM UTC:Oh, ok. I guess that makes sense. Unfortunately, that means the diagram designer can't show uncheckered boards, but that's not critical.
Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Sep 19, 2020 06:23 PM UTC:With some extensive testing I've been able to figure out the issue, although I don't understand it. The piece sets that don't work with diagram designer all have an extra carriage return at the end. Remove it, and they work fine. Take a file that works, put an extra blank line after the ?> line, and it breaks. Very odd for whitespace to break code...
The piece sets that don't work with diagram designer all have an extra carriage return at the end.
That makes perfect sense. While the Game Courier scripts create an HTML page, the drawdiagram.php script used by the Diagram Designer produces an image file. If that image file contains any text, even a white space, it is corrupted.
Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Sep 19, 2020 09:46 PM UTC:I am referring to a space in the php file that defines the piece set, not the image file created by the script. The diagram designer executes php code to dynamically create and return a binary image, right? Why would whitespace in the php source code of a program affect its output?
Update: Ok, maybe I see. Since the space is outside the ?> it gets incorporated into the output stream?
Ok, maybe I see. Since the space is outside the ?> it gets incorporated into the output stream?
Yes. Unlike Game Courier, which saves an image file to the server, drawdiagram.php simply becomes the image file. So, it's output has to be a pure image file. Since the set file gets included in it, that set file must be free of any text output.
Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Sep 20, 2020 06:46 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 12:45 AM:Ok, I have removed extra whitespace from all piece sets and verified that they all now work in diagram designer.
I cant even use it. HELP!!!
Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Apr 24, 2021 01:06 AM UTC in reply to Vibra_nium from Fri Apr 23 10:57 PM:I cant even use it. HELP!!!
When you do not even say what you do not understand, or what you have done, or what problem you are having, it is not possible for anyone to help you.
You must invest time yourself if you seriously expect anyone else to invest time to help you.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, May 7, 2021 05:36 PM UTC in reply to Jörg Knappen from 05:08 PM:The central piece is not shown on my screen
Hmmm... This does not make sense to me. The snake image is just a PNG. What browser are you using?
Greg, you can see it?
I'm using Firefox 88.0 on Ubuntu. I saw the snake in the process of creating the diagram, it was still there with the first two dots in the same rank, bit it disappeared mysteriously with the completion of the diagram.
Trying konqueror as an alternative browser, it shows the snake. Strange ...
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, May 7, 2021 06:30 PM UTC in reply to Jörg Knappen from 05:45 PM:Yes, I can see it. To confirm, I just checked with Firefox 88.0.1 on Linux Mint and it shows fine there too...
Since the diagram designer is a server-side script that generates and outputs an image file, the browser used should not make any difference.
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The 'diagram designer' was not made by me, but by Fergus. I am only responsible for the 'Interactive Diagram'. Because you explicitly address me, I will answer for the latter:
It is certainly not possible in the Interactive Diagram to use other board topologies, such as hexagonal bords, or circularly deformed boards. All boards must consist of a corner-connected grid of squares. Irregular shapes of such boards (such as e.g. in Omega Chess, with its wizzard squares, or the citadel of Tamerlane Chess) can be emulated by declaring some squares in the smallest surrounding rectangle to be inaccessible 'holes'. The Design Wizard in the Interactive Diagram article has no provisions for defining those, though. But you can just edit the HTML code that it delivers to add the holes; you only need to define an extra 'piece' with the name 'hole', followed by a list of squares that should be holes.