Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I can confirm that originally the Snake was not displayed in the diagram that Jörg posted. I looked at the page source, and the diagram was a direct link to the diagram generator, which did contain the S in the intended square in the CGI parameter. But no show... But now it magically appeared, with the same browser (FireFox). There must have been something temporarily wrong on the server, such that the server-side script could not find the Snake image file to compose the entire image.

Since the diagram designer is a server-side script that generates and outputs an image file, the browser used should not make any difference.

Yes, I can see it. To confirm, I just checked with Firefox 88.0.1 on Linux Mint and it shows fine there too...

Trying konqueror as an alternative browser, it shows the snake. Strange ...

Greg, you can see it?

I'm using Firefox 88.0 on Ubuntu. I saw the snake in the process of creating the diagram, it was still there with the first two dots in the same rank, bit it disappeared mysteriously with the completion of the diagram.

The central piece is not shown on my screen

Hmmm... This does not make sense to me.  The snake image is just a PNG.  What browser are you using?

I cant even use it. HELP!!!

When you do not even say what you do not understand, or what you have done, or what problem you are having, it is not possible for anyone to help you.

You must invest time yourself if you seriously expect anyone else to invest time to help you.

I cant even use it. HELP!!!

Ok, I have removed extra whitespace from all piece sets and verified that they all now work in diagram designer.

Ok, maybe I see. Since the space is outside the ?> it gets incorporated into the output stream?

Yes. Unlike Game Courier, which saves an image file to the server, drawdiagram.php simply becomes the image file. So, it's output has to be a pure image file. Since the set file gets included in it, that set file must be free of any text output.

I am referring to a space in the php file that defines the piece set, not the image file created by the script. The diagram designer executes php code to dynamically create and return a binary image, right? Why would whitespace in the php source code of a program affect its output?

Update: Ok, maybe I see. Since the space is outside the ?> it gets incorporated into the output stream?

The piece sets that don't work with diagram designer all have an extra carriage return at the end.

That makes perfect sense. While the Game Courier scripts create an HTML page, the drawdiagram.php script used by the Diagram Designer produces an image file. If that image file contains any text, even a white space, it is corrupted.

With some extensive testing I've been able to figure out the issue, although I don't understand it. The piece sets that don't work with diagram designer all have an extra carriage return at the end. Remove it, and they work fine. Take a file that works, put an extra blank line after the ?> line, and it breaks. Very odd for whitespace to break code...

Oh, ok. I guess that makes sense. Unfortunately, that means the diagram designer can't show uncheckered boards, but that's not critical.

Also, in Game Courier, if there is only one square color, it will draw outlines around the squares as shown in this preset: https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DMaorider+Chess%26settings%3Ddefault But Diagram Designer doesn't do this. It just shows a solid board with nothing to separate the squares.

That's a feature of the Table rendering method, which the Diagram Designer does not use. Game Courier does not do this for the GIF, JPG, or PNG methods.

Some piece sets still won't render a board with diagram designer although all the individual pieces show correctly. My earlier speculation that it involves sets with "for" in the title appears to be incorrect, or there is more to it. The ones that fail all seem to have "for" in the name, but some others containing "for" do work.

Also, in Game Courier, if there is only one square color, it will draw outlines around the squares as shown in this preset: https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DMaorider+Chess%26settings%3Ddefault But Diagram Designer doesn't do this. It just shows a solid board with nothing to separate the squares.

Ah! I think I found the commonality...

The Diagram Designer does not work if the name of the set contains the word "for", such as "Alfaerie for Bifold Chess". Must be a reserved word that is not being escaped somewhere.

Some piece sets will not work with the diagram designer for some reason, including sets that work fine with game courier.

For example, change the piece set to Alfaerie for Grand Betza. All the pieces show correctly, but the board produces a bad link. But here is a Game Courier preset that uses that same set and works fine:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Betza&settings=standard

Whatever it is is not related to the PNG graphics. There are other piece sets that have this problem also.

Yes, just change the set being used. The Alfaerie pieces are not a single set. There are multiple sets that use Alfaerie pieces. To change to another set using Alfaerie pieces, you will need to change the Set Group first. You may select "All" for a complete listing of all sets, or you may select a specific group of sets. The Automatic group contains script generated sets of all images in the same style, and each set in it bases labels on file names. The other groups contain manually written sets using more abbreviated labels. When you change the set, each piece in the new set will show up on the page with the label you need to use for it. Note that all pieces you use must be from the same set. Besides the Automatic sets, the "Alfaerie: Many" set will contain all or most Alfaerie pieces with short, but frequently cryptic, labels. Depending on what pieces are in your game, you might find a smaller set that includes them all.

Is it possible to use other pieces from the alfaerie set than those 26 which are displayed and acessible by one letter? I tried around with braces, e.g. {squirrel} or {bsquirrel.gif} but it doesn't work.

The diagram designer has a columns option. That is in relationship with the fen code where the number of blank spaces and pieces added up give the total board size.

Is it possible to adjust the number of ranks and files, on the board, independently?  I can't figure out how to increase the number of ranks without decreasing the number of files, and vice verse. 

Sorry, I knew about that. I meant HG's interactive diagram :)! And thanks for the info :)!