Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

It seems that, since about one week ago, the short description of a newly submitted game is not stored. I submitted two games in this week, and both don't show the description (and I'm sure I didn't forget to enter one).

Try it again. I added some code to translate values to integers when integer values are expected.

Fergus, you were able to see proper sql error messages in the logs before; can you get those to print in the helper function?

I think we use 0 for infinite/indeterminate.

Since some days I can't create a new game page. After filling out the form and clicking on "step2" it only says:

"adding item entry..."

but nothing happens. The game page doesn't show up in my unreviewed submissions. Clearing the browser cache didn't help.

BTW: what should I enter in the "Rows", "Cols" and "Cells" fields of the form if I want to post a chess variant on an infinite board or on a board whose number of cells/squares can change during the game?

Editors can do it with the editlink.php script, but we currently have no script for letting authors do it. So, add a comment to your page about what you want the description to say, and someone will add it for you.

update test

How can I edit the description of a page already created? I mean the description that shows in the listings of pages.

Specifically I want to add a description to Square Attrition Chess so that it does no longer show the bold "Missing description".

Ah ha! That must be it; the name I was trying to use was "Handicapped Almost Chess", which is 23 characters, if I counted right. Thanks!

Looking at the PHP error log for errors on the relevant script today, I got this:

[20-Dec-2022 06:20:55 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE[22001]: String data, right truncated: 1406 Data too long for column 'LinkItemID' at row 1 in /home/chessvariants/public_html/index/membersubmission2.php:382
Stack trace:
#0 /home/chessvariants/public_html/index/membersubmission2.php(382): PDOStatement->execute()
#1 {main}
  thrown in /home/chessvariants/public_html/index/membersubmission2.php on line 382
[20-Dec-2022 06:23:56 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE[22001]: String data, right truncated: 1406 Data too long for column 'LinkItemID' at row 1 in /home/chessvariants/public_html/index/membersubmission2.php:382
Stack trace:
#0 /home/chessvariants/public_html/index/membersubmission2.php(382): PDOStatement->execute()
#1 {main}
  thrown in /home/chessvariants/public_html/index/membersubmission2.php on line 382

If this was you, your group names were too long. Their maximum length is 16 characters.

Fergus would probably know straight away what the problem is.

If I knew straight away what a problem was, I probably would have fixed it already. Problems are normally unexpected and require investigative debugging to figure out.

Is there some problem with the Post Your Own Game page? When I enter game information and press the 'Step 2' button I get nothing but a blank page with the text '$personid is CroydThoth' (my username) at the top.

For me this appears to work normally. But it might depend on what exactly you entered as data in the first step. Fergus would probably know straight away what the problem is. However, I happen to be working on an enhanced copy of the submission pages, and I put some additional diagnostic output in those that could be helpful for determining which path exactly you take through the script, and thus where it might run aground. So if you want you could try to submit through this page, and tell me what is printed in that case.

[Edit] I did discover a flaw in the submission2.php page: the <LABEL> tag for the format SELECT is not closed. This cannot cause the effect you describe, though. But it had the nasty consequence that any mouse click on the page would scroll it back to get the SELECT in view.

Is there some problem with the Post Your Own Game page? When I enter game information and press the 'Step 2' button I get nothing but a blank page with the text '$personid is CroydThoth' (my username) at the top.

Apologies if this is a duplicate comment, pressing 'Post' didn't seem to work the first time.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Patented 8x8 Arimaa was heavily licensed, though it is arguably not a true CV (no king-like pieces). The one who licensed it in my opinion slowed the spread of what could have been an explosively popular board game, e.g. countless books, over-the-board clubs, by requiring permission to write/start such, instead restricting (online) play to one official website (when I looked there many years ago I saw number of logins [at least some being players] that were listed [low 100's, about what it is now?!]). Elsewhere there's approved equipment, and there are also apps sold, at least.

Ironically, the game was promoted as computer-resistant (compared to chess), but that claim did not last for two decades, even, and so maybe now the game is less played globally(??). I recall one Google search I did many years ago had the result 'They've fixed chess' (probably in reference to computers and/or that an Arimaa game cannot ever end in a draw). One other 'defect' uncovered is that in setting up a start position (done by each side), only a small few strategies are now thought clearly best, I've read somewhere.

The inventor restricted the power of any hardware that could be used to challenge humans in the contests on his website, but still a machine (program) eventually triumphed over the best humans in matches. Currently it seems clear no board game can ever be computer-resistant for long, especially with self-teaching programs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/

P.S.: I don't know much about patents around the world, but once any game is out in the public domain (and does become quite popular - usually requiring promotion by inventor anyway?!), I would guess the horse has left the barn; if so, no risk-free way to make a big profit, as is normal.

edit: Public domain rules, at least in US, may be more complex nowadays than I guessed - here's a sub-wiki that may be only just a taste:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_to_the_public_domain

I fully agree.

Chances that people want to play a variant are very small. Chances they would want to pay for it next to zero.

There are two variants I know of that were patented. In the U.S.. (Patents do not automatically apply world wide.) In the U.S. you can pretty much patent anything; whether the patent is valid is to be determined in the court cases that challenge it. That makes them cheap; there only is a (yearly?) registration fee. In Europe it can take tens of thousands euros to do the due diligence get a patent approved. (And the result of this in case of a chess variant would most likely be that it gets rejected, for lack of novelty.) As far as I know both U.S. patents expired before anyone challenged them, because the inventors got tired of paying the fees.

To make sure there would be no legal issues for this website, there was a ban on using words that reminded of the variant in any posting here.

I am not sure how you could make money out of a chess variant. Unless it requires special equipment, which you sell. Patents are more suitable for protecting equipment than ideas. Chess variants typically only require a board and pieces, though. Boards can be made from cardboard and paper, and pretty much anything could be used as pieces. (A wide selection of high-quality unorthodox pieces is already commercially available, both in wood and plastic.) There is no way you could prevent people using these at home.

Of course you could set up an internet server where the variant could be played on-line. And ask a fee for regestering there. It seems a good way to make absolutely sure no one would ever want to play it, even in the extremely unlikely case that the variant would have the potential to become popular on its own merits.

I have a new chess variant idea. 
Before I send it across to you , I have a few questions:

1) If my variant idea becomes popular, is there any way I can get paid for it ?

2) Can chess variant idea be patented ? Can I apply for a patent before sending it to you ? How many chess variants in your site are patented ?

very well you guys are the proffesionals and if it makes the game easier then yes in the first two ranks can make the pawns move forward two