H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 5, 2015 07:33 PM UTC:
I now even made a design-help page, which has input fields for all the parameters (clearly labeled with their function, and pre-filled with the default values), and buttons to add those to the diagram description. Itcontains a diagram, and performs the conversion Description -> Actual Diagram each time you change the description (e.g. by adding an extra piece). When you are finally done it prints the HTML code with the diagram description in a text memo, so that the user can copy-paste it into his own page, at the point where he wants the diagram to appear.
There is still one issue, though, and that is the filenames of the piece images. The design page that is running on my website taps into the piece images I have on-line there (hgm.nubati.net/rules/sym/). This is a directory that does not contain an index.html file, so when you browse there, it prints a listing of all the (.png) files there. The Design Page uses this to compile a list of the available image files, to present it to the user when the latter clicks a 'Pick' button. The user can then click one of the names to transfer it to the 'Image filename' field. (And the piece name and ID are derived from the filename, if not specified, so that he only has to supply the Betza move in that case. And even that is not needed for orthodox pieces.)
If this page were to be hosted on chessvariants.org, this would currently not work: if, for example, the 'graphics.dir/alfaerie' directory would be specified as the piece-image directory, the directory listing of that page would be eclipsed by the index.html that is in it. That means the 'Pick' button would not show anything, so that people would have to figure out for themselves what the names are of the alfaerie files they want to use.
Perhaps a server-side script could be used to provide a list of filenames of these directories, so that the JavaScript running in the client could request it from the server, and present the list (possibly fetching the images to display them with it) to the user, so he can pick the image.
But of course these are just minor issues in the user-friendliness of the designing process. For users that upload their own images, they would have to refer to those from their html submission anyway, and they would know how they named them.
I now even made a design-help page, which has input fields for all the parameters (clearly labeled with their function, and pre-filled with the default values), and buttons to add those to the diagram description. Itcontains a diagram, and performs the conversion Description -> Actual Diagram each time you change the description (e.g. by adding an extra piece). When you are finally done it prints the HTML code with the diagram description in a text memo, so that the user can copy-paste it into his own page, at the point where he wants the diagram to appear.
There is still one issue, though, and that is the filenames of the piece images. The design page that is running on my website taps into the piece images I have on-line there (hgm.nubati.net/rules/sym/). This is a directory that does not contain an index.html file, so when you browse there, it prints a listing of all the (.png) files there. The Design Page uses this to compile a list of the available image files, to present it to the user when the latter clicks a 'Pick' button. The user can then click one of the names to transfer it to the 'Image filename' field. (And the piece name and ID are derived from the filename, if not specified, so that he only has to supply the Betza move in that case. And even that is not needed for orthodox pieces.)
If this page were to be hosted on chessvariants.org, this would currently not work: if, for example, the 'graphics.dir/alfaerie' directory would be specified as the piece-image directory, the directory listing of that page would be eclipsed by the index.html that is in it. That means the 'Pick' button would not show anything, so that people would have to figure out for themselves what the names are of the alfaerie files they want to use.
Perhaps a server-side script could be used to provide a list of filenames of these directories, so that the JavaScript running in the client could request it from the server, and present the list (possibly fetching the images to display them with it) to the user, so he can pick the image.
But of course these are just minor issues in the user-friendliness of the designing process. For users that upload their own images, they would have to refer to those from their html submission anyway, and they would know how they named them.