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Comments by AlexanderLange

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Alexander Lange wrote on Sat, Jul 4, 2009 09:54 AM UTC:
Hello everyone!

As David wrote, I plan to include more chess pieces in future versions of
my font Quivira. In order to do that sensefully, I need some input
 · what characters are useful at all
 · which ones are most important (I probably won’t be able to do all at
once, so I’ll have to set priorities)
 · how to group / order them sensefully.

At the moment, I tend to define two new blocks:
Chess Symbols Extended-A with rotated and/or combined pieces
Chess Symbols Extended-B with all the rest.

Which pieces are needed in a rotated or mirrored variant? Does this
distinction make sense at all?

In a comment on the Quivira page, Charles Gilman mentioned knighted and
camelled pieces. Which pieces can be combined in such a way?

Kind regards,
Alexander Lange

Alexander Lange wrote on Wed, Aug 5, 2009 09:23 PM UTC:

Hi!

Thank you for your feedback. I’ve been browsing the Piececlopedia within the last days, with the following results:

1. From the pieces you’ve mentioned, I couldn’t find the Bird (does it equal the Raven?), Panda, Bear, Sow, Boar or Zemel. Where are they used?

2. Generally I tend to unify pieces with same or similar behavior, if they are not used in the same game (which would make even the slightest difference necessary to be representable). E.g. I haven’t included a Chariot, because I didn’t see a relevant difference to the rook. For the same reason, I don’t see what a special Korean Elephant is needed for, as it seems to never contrast with the “normal” Elephant. (Please correct me if it is needed in some context.)

3. I found the following combined pieces:

  • Marshall / Chancellor / Empress (Rook + Knight)
  • Cardinal / Paladin / Princess (Bishop + Knight)
  • Amazon (Queen + Knight)
  • Carpenter (War Engine + Knight)
  • Centaur (Man + Knight)
  • Canvasser (Rook + Camel)
  • Caliph (Bishop + Camel)
  • Wizard (Ferz + Camel)
  • Waffle (Wazir + Elephant)
  • Alibaba / Spider (War Engine + Elephant)

Would it make sense to encode Empress and/or Princess separately, i.e. is the difference between royal and non-royal variants relevant in any game?

4. Some other pieces I tend to include:

  • Berolina Pawn
  • Sergeant
  • Man / Cleric / Commoner
  • Champion / Hero
  • Vao (but don’t know yet what it should look like)
  • Maybe Ram / Advancer, Basilisk, Crocodile, Dragon, Monkey, Rhino, Squirrel / Castle, Windmill, Withdrawer.

5. I recognized that some existing symbols can be used for some pieces:
U+25CF ● BLACK CIRCLE and U+25CB ○ WHITE CIRCLE for Orphan and Rose
U+25C6 ◆ BLACK DIAMOND and U+25C7 ◇ WHITE DIAMOND for Friend
U+2605 ★ BLACK STAR and U+2606 ☆ WHITE STAR for Joker
U+2691 ⚑ BLACK FLAG and U+2690 ⚐ WHITE FLAG for Flag

There are also quite a lot of other black and white symbols you can use for unencoded pieces, e.g. ■□▲△♥♡⚉⚇⬟⬠⬢⬡⬮⬯

6. David, I agree with you that we should try to get the most important ones first, but I’d like to have an overview of how many pieces we will finally have, and what kinds of pieces. This is needed for grouping and ordering. E.g. I tend to group the combined pieces together. So if we, e.g., leave out the waffle in the first run, I would still like to reserve a codepoint for it next to the other combined pieces. Otherwise they will be scattered all over the PUA, with no cognoscible order.

Regards, Alexander


Alexander Lange wrote on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 01:43 PM UTC:

Aloha!

If none of you protests it, I tend to start with the following assignments:

E140 – E17F: Chess Symbols Extended-A (Additional pieces, animals, fantasy)
A white and a black version of each of the following, in this order, starting with E140:
Berolina Pawn, Sergeant, Man, Champion, Vao, Windmill, Crooked Bishop, Crooked Rook
Lion, Monkey, Crocodile, Zebra, Gnu, Rhino, Squirrel, Bird
Gryphon, Dragon, Basilisk, Elemental, Dwarf, Nightrider, Camelrider
18 codepoints left unassigned (9 pieces)

E180 – E1AF: Chess Symbols Extended-B (Turned and combined pieces)
A white and a black version of each of the following, in this order, starting with E180:
Turned King, Turned Queen, Turned Rook, Turned Bishop, Turned Knight, 6 codepoints left unassigned (3 pieces)
Knight + Queen, Knight + Rook, Knight + Bishop, Knight + War Engine, Knight + Man, Camel + Rook, Camel + Bishop, Camel + Ferz
Elephant + Knight, Elephant + Vizir, Elephant + War Engine, Bishop + War Engine
8 codepoints left unassigned (4 pieces)

I am not sure if I can add all of those in the next version of Quivira (3.2); maybe I leave some of them out and add them later. Other Symbols can be defined later. If the unassigned codepoints mentioned above don’t suffice, I can add another block (probably Chess Symbols Extended-C then).

Please note that, once a symbol has been released, I cannot delete or move it in later versions, because this would break existing documents. This means that reordering existing pieces is not possible.

Regards, Alexander


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