H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Nov 18, 2019 07:20 PM UTC:
The Interactive Diagram basically is a table of piece images, where the table cells are made sensitive to mouse clicks, which then can bring about the desired manipulation of the images (e.g. move them to other cells) or background colors. Such a structure would not allow drawing of image elements that span multiple cells, such as the arrows in the video.
I guess that in theory it should be possible to break up the arrows in cell-sized 'puzzle pieces' of straight parts, corner parts, arrow heads etc., in all possible orientations, and synthesize cell-spanning arrows from those pieces. The Chess pieces are actually displayed as cell background image, and have transparent background themselves, through which a background color for the cell shows (which I then use for highlighting). So technically the cells are empty, and just show a background. Images of arrow segments could be put inside them, and the non-transparent parts would then cover the piece images in the background. But this would require the images of the arrow segments to exactly fit the cell (or the browser's display algorithm would just enlarge the cells to fit the image). So it would require a different set of arrow segments for each conceivable square size. And it is a bit hard anyway to make images fit exactly in table cells; most browsers want to take some margin between the image and the cell edges, especially at the botton. So the arrows might look more like dashed lines.
Of course there still would be the problem of how a user should indicate where he wants arrows. Or other types of highlights. All in all it would not be very easy.
The current diagram already records all moves you play to make them into a game history. And on a page with a diagram you can request presence of buttons to step through a thus recorded games. For the diagrams I post here I never included such buttons, because they just serve the purpose of illustrating the piece moves and initial position. But you can see them in operation at my turn-based server, which uses the Interactive Diagram as user interface..
The Interactive Diagram basically is a table of piece images, where the table cells are made sensitive to mouse clicks, which then can bring about the desired manipulation of the images (e.g. move them to other cells) or background colors. Such a structure would not allow drawing of image elements that span multiple cells, such as the arrows in the video.
I guess that in theory it should be possible to break up the arrows in cell-sized 'puzzle pieces' of straight parts, corner parts, arrow heads etc., in all possible orientations, and synthesize cell-spanning arrows from those pieces. The Chess pieces are actually displayed as cell background image, and have transparent background themselves, through which a background color for the cell shows (which I then use for highlighting). So technically the cells are empty, and just show a background. Images of arrow segments could be put inside them, and the non-transparent parts would then cover the piece images in the background. But this would require the images of the arrow segments to exactly fit the cell (or the browser's display algorithm would just enlarge the cells to fit the image). So it would require a different set of arrow segments for each conceivable square size. And it is a bit hard anyway to make images fit exactly in table cells; most browsers want to take some margin between the image and the cell edges, especially at the botton. So the arrows might look more like dashed lines.
Of course there still would be the problem of how a user should indicate where he wants arrows. Or other types of highlights. All in all it would not be very easy.
The current diagram already records all moves you play to make them into a game history. And on a page with a diagram you can request presence of buttons to step through a thus recorded games. For the diagrams I post here I never included such buttons, because they just serve the purpose of illustrating the piece moves and initial position. But you can see them in operation at my turn-based server, which uses the Interactive Diagram as user interface..