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Maidens Chess. Members-Only Chess with forced capture (or huffing of piece), adaptation of Shatranj with forced capture of Alfonso Codex, year 1283.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 30, 2022 08:29 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 01:46 AM:

I also use WYSIWYG mode for submitting comments. My only reason for using HTML is when I want to embed active elements (like Interactive Diagrams) in the submission. Links, images, pre-formatted text and such are all supported in WYSIWIG mode.

In general I find the indentation enforced by the CkEditor in HTML mode helpful. Apart from HTML it also appears to understand embedded JavaScript, and the nice layout prevents errors. I thought that ending 'solo tages" like IMG or BR with /> was actually the HTML 5 standard, so you can hardly blame the editor that it enforces that.

Only very rarely the mangling of whitespace by the Ck Editor backfires. One case was for posting Interactive Diagrams: the definition of those must be given as text within a HTML tag pair (like DIV or TD) which normally ignore leading whitespace in their content. So the Editor indented the definition line, while the original Diagram script expected the definition lines to be left-adjusted. So I had delete all leading whitespace from the Diagram definition before saving each time I edited a submission containing a Diagram. I quickly got tired of that, so I just had the routine in the Diagram script that parses the game definition strip the leading whitespce. (As well as trailing BR tags, which tend to appear there when you copy-paste from HTML Page Source.)

I think the only reason we are discussing this issue is that we now have identified a second (quite rare) case where the adding of leading whitespace backfires: text within TEXTAREA tags. Apparently this is a blind spot of the CkEditor: it does recognize PRE tags, and knows it should not mess with the layout there. But it appears to not do the same thing for TEXTAREA, while it should: this is another context where the text between tags should not be messed with.

While I see plenty of reasons why one could want to use pre-formatted text in submissions through PRE tags, I only see very few for TEXTAREA. The Play-Test Applet uses a TEXTAREA for pasting an existing Interactive Diagram into it (so you can convert it to GAME code, or get a table with verbal descriptions of the moves. But it starts out empty. But it appears that invoking Game Courier as a game viewer would be another application, and the first and only article I so far encountered that did this was Asylum Chess.

Logical solution would be: (1) Make Game Courier strip the leading whitespace the CkEditor added, so that it no longer matters (like I did for the Diagram). (2) Fix the Ck Editor so it treats TEXTAREA the same as PRE (not adding any whitespace). (3) Let the submission script delete leading whitespace only between TEXTAREA tags. This cannot be too hard. (4) Let the submission form test whether the page being edited contains TEXTAREA tags by itself, and only in that case suppress the use of the CkEditor. The text input fields of the form have the standard editing capabilities (which you have to rely on when JavaScript is switched off, as the CkEditor is a JavaScript program).


HTML vs Markdown. A style guide to using Markdown or HTML on this site.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Nov 30, 2022 03:29 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 01:54 AM:

@Greg, leaving (at least) two spaces at the end of a line before a return renders a newline without a new paragraph.

E.g.,
Ben


Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Nov 30, 2022 01:54 AM UTC:

This is a nice guide, and will be helpful.

I have one markdown question.  Is there a standard way to force a line break?  If I just put a single return, it is ignored.  If I add two returns, I get a blank line between the two.  I suppose I can just use the HTML <BR> tag but is there a markdown-specific way to do this?  I do this for things like:

Thanks,
Greg


How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Nov 30, 2022 01:46 AM UTC in reply to Ben Reiniger from Mon Nov 28 06:50 PM:

I think we should keep the current WYSIWYG editor unless we find a better one. It is what I generally use. For quoting people and typing responses, often with formatting, I think it's the easiest and most intuitive of the methods. Mangling whitespace is a potential issue, but it doesn't seem to manifest much in practice.


Maidens Chess. Members-Only Chess with forced capture (or huffing of piece), adaptation of Shatranj with forced capture of Alfonso Codex, year 1283.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.

Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.

ChessVA computer program
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
📝Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Nov 29, 2022 05:16 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Mon Nov 28 12:32 PM:

How does the colourbound pieces bonus/penalty work when more pairs of colourbound pieces are involved?

The current approach is pretty simple.  First, it only applies to pieces that split the board into two regions.  Pieces with higher-order colorbindings, like Dabbabahs, are not considered for colorbound bonus/penalty at all.  A player is given a half-pawn bonus for having at least one colorbound piece on each "color" (see note below) and given a significant penalty for having two pieces on the same color with nothing on the other.

Note: All pieces with bindings that split the board in two are considered equivalent.  This is not ideal.  It is possible to have two different types of pieces that have two different "color" bindings that are not the same.  This happens in Alice Chess for example.  In Alice, both the Bishops and the Knights can only see half the boards, but they are not the same bindings!  (Any pair of bishop and knight will be on the same squares on one board and on opposite squares on the other.  The current strategy isn't smart enough to account for this.)

Does the endgame value of a piece influence opening exchanges, or is it just the middlegame value?

Endgame value will have no influence.  The evaluation of a position is interpolated between the midgame and endgame values based on the amount of material remaining.  It does not even start sliding from midgame to endgame until 20% of the starting material has been captured.

I have seen that you have programmed beautiful sun chess. Why not Xiangqi also?

The issue with Xiangqi is the very complicated and hard-to-implement repetition/anti-chasing rules.  I'm not even sure I understand them, much less know how to implement them (although I haven't really spent time on it.)


Maidens Chess. Members-Only Chess with forced capture (or huffing of piece), adaptation of Shatranj with forced capture of Alfonso Codex, year 1283.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Amphibians synergy bonus compared to other compounds[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Nov 29, 2022 04:20 PM UTC:

From the chess StackExchange site comes this variant question: https://chess.stackexchange.com/q/41052/18278

To paraphrase very briefly: compound pieces seem to often have a synergy value of 1 (e.g. Q=R+B, v(Q)=9, v(R)+v(B)=8); do amphibians see a larger synergy bonus arising from their un-binding?


Maidens Chess. Members-Only Chess with forced capture (or huffing of piece), adaptation of Shatranj with forced capture of Alfonso Codex, year 1283.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Nov 29, 2022 02:03 PM UTC:

I made a slight tweak to how the Text format works. It used to put PRE tags around any text. It will now put PRE tags around the text only if the text does not contain any HTML tags. This will allow the Text format to be used for entering HTML without CKEditor. Note that it could already be used to enter HTML, but that HTML would appear within PRE tags.

If you want to mix in HTML without including P tags around paragraphs, Markdown will let you do that. Since HTML works in any browser without translation to another format, HTML mixed in with another format still works.


Chess Tests: Bizarre PositionsA miscellaneous item
. Website with tests of strange chess positions and how programs deal with these.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
CSS Dixieland wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2022 09:58 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Mister Albillo had his interesting Web pages about his so-called Bizarre Chess stored since 1998 in a free server, but unfortunately, that server went out of activity in the early 2000s.

Then Mister Albillo did not find another server, and he kept for twenty years his Bizarre Chess only with himself, unknown to the World.

Recently he has converted his old Web pages to Adobe Portable Document Format, and re-published them after that hiatus of twenty years.

The old hyper link given by him obviously is dead, but as of late 2022 this other hyper link is working perfectly:

https://albillo.hpcalc.org/files/misc/chesstests

Each page has been made into a different PDF, available for download. There are twenty in total and not heavier than 300 Kilobytes each. They contain astonishing examples of weird situations on the board, and comments made by important authorities.

The old hyper links do not work in the PDFs. Mister Albillo has chosen to preserve the flavour of an era in the History of Chess and Computing, out of a nostalgic feeling for a time that is 'Gone with the Wind'.

The Illustrious Members of Chess Variants will certainly find engaging material in those pages. Especially those of us who love the History of our Noble Game.


How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2022 06:50 PM UTC:

I suspect some people will still get along better with a WYSIWYG editor than with markdown, even with the quick guide. Is it worth considering other editors? There's StackExchange's open-source editor "Stacks-Editor," but it's quite new (still in an open beta?).

I agree that mangling whitespace, even when we generally prefer non-ASCII diagrams, is a serious offense.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2022 06:01 PM UTC:

I'm thinking of removing CKEditor from the site. In source mode, it has been reformatting text, which is annoying. I rewrote trim_lines to better handle ASCII diagrams, and it did a great job at that. In the test I ran, an ASCII diagram for Hexagonal Chess looked like this:

        a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   j   k
                        ___
                    ___/ b \___                  8
                ___/:q:\___/:k:\___
            ___/!n!\___/!b!\___/!n!\___          7
        ___/ r \___/   \___/   \___/ r \___
    ___/:p:\___/:::\___/:b:\___/:::\___/:p:\___  6
   /!!!\___/!p!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!p!\___/!!!\
11 \___/   \___/ p \___/   \___/ p \___/   \___/ 5
   /:::\___/:::\___/:p:\___/:p:\___/:::\___/:::\
10 \___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!p!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/ 4
   /   \___/   \___/   \___/   \___/   \___/   \
 9 \___/:::\___/:::\___/:::\___/:::\___/:::\___/ 3
   /!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\
 8 \___/   \___/   \___/ P \___/   \___/   \___/ 2
   /:::\___/:::\___/:P:\___/:P:\___/:::\___/:::\
 7 \___/!!!\___/!P!\___/!!!\___/!P!\___/!!!\___/ 1
   /   \___/ P \___/   \___/   \___/ P \___/   \
 6 \___/:P:\___/:::\___/:B:\___/:::\___/:P:\___/
       \___/!R!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!R!\___/
 5         \___/ N \___/ B \___/ N \___/
               \___/:Q:\___/:K:\___/
 4                 \___/!B!\___/
                       \___/
     a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   j   k

But when I load the content of the page in CKEditor, it looks like this:

<DIV>
  <PRE>
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   j   k
    ___
    ___/ b \___                  8
    ___/:q:\___/:k:\___
    ___/!n!\___/!b!\___/!n!\___          7
    ___/ r \___/   \___/   \___/ r \___
    ___/:p:\___/:::\___/:b:\___/:::\___/:p:\___  6
    /!!!\___/!p!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!p!\___/!!!\
    11 \___/   \___/ p \___/   \___/ p \___/   \___/ 5
    /:::\___/:::\___/:p:\___/:p:\___/:::\___/:::\
    10 \___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!p!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/ 4
    /   \___/   \___/   \___/   \___/   \___/   \
    9 \___/:::\___/:::\___/:::\___/:::\___/:::\___/ 3
    /!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!!!\
    8 \___/   \___/   \___/ P \___/   \___/   \___/ 2
    /:::\___/:::\___/:P:\___/:P:\___/:::\___/:::\
    7 \___/!!!\___/!P!\___/!!!\___/!P!\___/!!!\___/ 1
    /   \___/ P \___/   \___/   \___/ P \___/   \
    6 \___/:P:\___/:::\___/:B:\___/:::\___/:P:\___/
    \___/!R!\___/!!!\___/!!!\___/!R!\___/
    5         \___/ N \___/ B \___/ N \___/
    \___/:Q:\___/:K:\___/
    4                 \___/!B!\___/
    \___/
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   j   k
  </PRE>
</DIV>

I can get it looking correct by turning CKEditor off, but it's still annoying.

Also, it has been treating unpaired tags as unclosed unless they end with /. Since it indents each unclosed tag further than the last one, things can easily get out of hand with lots of IMG or INPUT tags that do not have closing tags.

The WYSIWYG editor has filled a gap for people who don't know HTML, and it's a better option than writing everything in plain text. However, the option of using Markdown fills the same gap. Markdown is an intuitive markup language that borrows conventions common to plain text documents and replaces them with appropriate HTML. It is already the default format for entering comments, and you can see a Quick Markdown Guide if you look down while entering a comment in the Markdown format. Markdown combines the ease of writing a plain text document with the power of HTML.

And it also allows those who know HTML to mix in HTML with the Markdown.


ChessVA computer program
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2022 12:32 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Thu Nov 24 08:26 AM:

Hello Greg,

I had 2 questions earlier this month:

1.How does the colourbound pieces bonus/penalty work when more pairs of colourbound pieces are involved?

2.Does the endgame value of a piece influence opening exchanges, or is it just the middlegame value?

You probably missed them.

I have seen that you have programmed beautiful sun chess. Why not Xiangqi also?


Chak. A modern vision of what a Mayan chess would look like.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2022 08:02 AM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Sun Nov 27 10:29 PM:

OK, fixed. (Flush browser cache to use new version!)


Dada. The colorbound chess variant. (7x10, Cells: 70) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2022 02:08 AM UTC:

As an example of how Markdown can be used to touch up pages originally done in plain text, I have revised this page in Markdown. The text was already doing bulleted lists in the same way as Markdown does, and I just left that alone. I initially marked off the diagrams as preformatted text, and then I replaced one with a diagram from the diagram designer. It was helpful that the author already included the FEN code, though I had to fix it up a bit, because he used different letters for the same pieces. I'll touch it up more later. For now, what I've done is a trial run for using Markdown to fix up plain text pages without manually adding in HTML code.


How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2022 10:30 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 10:27 PM:

These changes affect pages, not presets. This has nothing to do with Game Courier presets except that there are pages referring people to them.


Chak. A modern vision of what a Mayan chess would look like.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2022 10:29 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 09:35 PM:

I have no problem with using 'unmoved', but do you have a short alternative for 'virginity' used further down in the legend?

Here is your text:

Click on piece to toggle virginity on/off

English does not have a single word noun for what you mean. I would suggest "moved status" or "unmoved status" if you want a noun, or you could rewrite it to say "Click on piece to toggle whether it has moved."


How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2022 10:27 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 09:22 PM:

Hope I'm not concerned. I don't understand anything, this is for experts. Are these changes affecting the Game Courier presets made so far?


Chak. A modern vision of what a Mayan chess would look like.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2022 09:35 PM UTC:

Well, the inventor of the 10x8 chessvariant that could not be mentioned here even objected to the use of 'fairy' for the same reason, and insisted that Fairy-Max would participate in his championship under another name. :-)

I have no problem with using 'unmoved', but do you have a short alternative for 'virginity' used further down in the legend?


How to Design and Post Your Own Game. A reference for those who want to post their own games here.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2022 09:22 PM UTC:

I modified the scripts for submitting or editing member-submitted pages to use the format attribute instead of the useshtml attribute. While the latter was binary, the former has four values. The format may now be set to HTML, Markdown, Text, or WYSIWYG. HTML and WYSIWYG both get saved to the database as HTML, though they differ in which mode CkEditor is used with them. Markdown and Text are both saved as plain text in the database, and neither uses CkEditor. They differ in how they are displayed. Markdown is a simpler markup language than HTML, and it gets converted to HTML before being displayed. Text just gets surrounded by PRE tags with no additional conversion.

So far, I have added Format to the database without removing UsesHTML. I will remove it later. In the meantime, please check how well the scripts are working and leave any comments on them here.


Chak. A modern vision of what a Mayan chess would look like.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2022 05:14 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 02:05 PM:

H.G., I think by virgin you mean unmoved. The latter word is preferable, because its meaning is precise and literal, whereas the former could be used only metaphorically, and it comes with the baggage of sexual and human sacrifice connotations.


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