Author: Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com)
Date: 11:18:46 10/24/98
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On October 24, 1998 at 04:46:44, Dann Corbit wrote: >On October 23, 1998 at 12:53:26, Will Singleton wrote: >>Ok, I'll admit I'm confused. Why does anyone need a character representation of >>a chessboard? What is it used for? Am I in a Brady Bunch movie? :) >> >>No one can read those things, come on. >Well, it's one of those hypothetical things. Like, "Suppose you're walking down >the street and someone catapults a dead elephant at you... What kind of >umbrella would you want for protection?" >Maybe we *haven't* looked at a character only chessboard since the ancient days >of "Ed-Chess", but if someone put a gun to our heads and said, "LOOK AT THESE >CHESSBOARDS!" -- well, which one would you like to look at? >;-) Actually, I do a lot of web surfing with Lynx (text display only, monocase, monospace), so I appreciate chess sites that use the "ALT" field of the "IMG" tag to provide text board views of HTML chess diagrams. This is another advantage of using the "one GIF per square" approach of generating Web chess diagrams. I also like seeing them in conjunction with EPD in posts in CCC and r.g.c.c., so I can get a quick feel for what the latest "can any program solve this position" problem is. (of course, having a chess program open while I surf that accepts "drag 'n drop" of EPD onto the board display is nice, too.) Here's my latest favorite ( "o" = white pawn - white interior, looks like real pawn from above ) ( "#" = black pawn - dark and sort of roundish (octagonal convex hull)) ------------------- | . . . . . . . . | | . . . . . B # . | | . . . . o . . . | | . . . . . . # o | | . b . k . o . . | | . . . . . K . . | | . . . . . . . . | | . . . . . . . . | ------------------- 8/5Bp1/4P3/6pP/1b1k1P2/5K2/8/8 w - - With this representation, the most hardest task of classic text boards (distinguishing black pawns from white pawns) is now the easiest task. [ Hmmm ... this reminds me of DEC "Star Trek", ca. 1974 ] I'm actually very pleased with the results of the discussion so far - lots of discussion of the issues with text board representation, and many creative solutions to ameliorate them. Someone could distill this thread and make a nice article for Computer Chess Reports. (Yes, I know, why don't I do it. Not this weekend.) Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com)
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