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Betza Notation. A primer on the leading shorthand for describing variant piece moves.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Robert Shimmin wrote on Sat, Jan 25, 2003 09:39 PM UTC:
Betza's Funny Notation has its merits, but it also has its weak points. 
It's great at concisely describing combination leapers, and OK at
describing the simpler types of riders, but as one begins to contemplate
the vast variety of fairy pieces (take a look at the glossary of
Problemesis for inspiration sometimes) that have actually been used in
games or problems, it becomes obvious that describing them all accurately
requires an enormous supply of modifiers (far larger than the number of
letters in the alphabet).

As an example, just look at some of the modifiers that Jorg Knappen had to
invent to describe the various crooked nightriders used in Nachtmahr.

I have begun a time or two to formulate a more general notation, but every
system I have come up with simply requires too much effort to decode. 
Quite simply, it is less effort for someone reading the rules to read a
natural-language description than it is to decode a sufficiently
complicated compact notation.

The Funny Notation is wonderfully concise and easy to decode for the those
pieces that it was originally designed for.  But the ad-hoc piling on of
modifiers can only be taken so far before it is no longer easy to describe
or decode pieces, and I think it's pretty close to that point at present.