I had written:
> Viewing a chess-board in plain text, I deem an unrealistic
> expectation.
Which was not exactly what I meant :-(
Now, let me explain.
Marco Cimarosti wrote:
> Why? All one needs is a CJK non-proportional font:
The meaning of plain text ought not depend on the usage of a
particular font; hence, two-dimensional arrays are ill suited for
plain text, as these depend on a fixed-width font.
Granted that we are all used to associate plain-text with fixed-
width fonts (because of the decades we had only cell-array dis-
plays), the above statement may be a bit too puristic...
Marco:
> １. Grid only, no shades:
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> |♜|♞|♝|♚|♛|♝|♞|♜|
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> |♟|♟|♟|♟|♟|♟|♟|♟|
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> | | | | | | | | |
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> | | | | | | | | |
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> | | | | | | | | |
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> | | | | | | | | |
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> | | | | | | | | |
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
> |♖|♘|♗|♕|♔|♗|♘|♖|
> +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
This is one of the possibilities I had in mind, when I wrote:
> The background shading is a mere matter of style, and does not
> contribute to the semantic content of the chess situation; the
> alternating background colours are only an aid for the eye.
However, the remainder of my contribution was really about Word's
treatment of Unicode text; and that program does not carry the
table structure over to the plain text, so you will rather get
something like
♜
♞
♝
♚
♛
♝
♞
♜
♟
♟
♟
♟
♟
♟
♟
♟
((40 empty lines))
♖
♘
♗
♕
♔
♗
♘
♖
I had also written:
> White to move and checkmate in 5 moves. (Sam Lloyd)
Actually, it's checkmate in 4 moves. Can you find the
solution?
Marco also wrote:
> ２. Shades only, no grid:
...
> #♖# ♘ #♗# ♕ #♔# ♗ #♘# ♖
> #### #### #### ####
...
> ３. Both shades and grid:
...
> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
> |#♖#| ♘ |#♗#| ♕ |#♔#| ♗ |#♘#| ♖ |
> |####| |####| |####| |####| |
> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
To me, this shows that plain text really cannot acccommodate shades:
I hardly see the chess pieces amongst the number signs. As said be-
fore, shades belong to the realm of styles/markup.
Best wishes,
Otto Stolz
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jun 21 2002 - 06:35:48 EDT