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Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Apr 28, 2016 07:07 AM UTC:
Fergus Duniho asks whether it is a problem that it takes a lot of code to add a single piece image before the text describing it. The answer, after much thought, is that it seems inefficient compared to the improvement in array diagram design. As well as eliminating huge numbers of individual piece - and empty cell - images on multiplayer variants and Neutral Subject Chess (Hans Bodlaender's ffen diagrams never worked with coloured images in all my time on these pages) it offered a wide enough range of piece images to allow me to replace 23 array image files, which I have relegated to the Recycle Bin on my own computer and do not expect to ever restore. It has even inspired me to discontinue Square Versus Hex and Xiangcata pages, whose diagrams were not suited for conversion at least with the board properly joined up, allowing deletion of 7 further files ¹.

Thanks more to eliminating piece images and Ascii Art from my pages' Setup sections, these now have a uniform simplicity, making Pieces sections look untidy in comparison. It is true that my initial use of drawdiagram.php highlights the duplication, but replcing one long string of code with another doesn't really address the issue. In fact it would not increase code much to substitute a complete movement diagram for each piece in 2d variants ². Is it really impossible to devise a table with one column of images based on a single setting and one column of text - with the two lining up appropriately horizontally, of course?

True, the number of pieces is not on the same scale as the total number of cells in the array diagram. FIDE Chess has 6 as against 64, for example. It does however soon mount up. Shogi has 10 pieces, including promoted forms - and more if one distinguishes Goldgenerals resulting from different promotions. Yonin Toyang Mitregi ³ has 8 piece types that are always array ones, 2 that are array in one variant and promotee in the other, and 6 that are always promotee - 16 in all. In 3d it mounts up still further. Ladies and Generals ³, as an extrapolation of Okisaki to 3d - has 30 piece types, 17 array and 13 promotee, and showing the array piece and its promoted for run together is a significant code saving. Weltschach, as an attampt to square the FIDE back rank in composition as well as number, has 29 array pieces once differently-promotable Stockbrokers are distinguished - which they now are.

If there really isn't any way of streamlining the Pieces section, fair enough, but it would be good if someone (not necessarily the FD, but probably an editor) could design one.

¹ Once I have decided whether to discontinue Kennet, eliminating two further image files, I will issue a full list so that they can also be deleted from the CVP website.

² I would be interested to know whether other CVP participants would welcome such a change. It would make particular sense in Nimrod Chess, Hunterbeest, their Bachelor forms, and Westfield Chess.

³ Rerouting appears to have broken the traditional links to this page, but they can be found by clicking my name, "Items invented...", and the relevant initial letter.


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