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H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Nov 24, 2016 10:20 AM UTC:

Well, the naming is not a big deal. I agree with the idea that it is much more important to make the piece images reflect the way the piece moves than reflect the name. I also try to follow this policy in WinBoard. But players of some of the more popular variants, such as Seirawan Chess, in general get very unhappy when you depict the pieces not exactly as they are used to (i.e.when you use something else than Hawk and Elephant for BN and RN).

But using a piece image that suggests a certain move would be very confusing if it clearly depicts something that matches the name of another piece. E.g. if a variant uses pieces that move like a Camel and a Modern Elephant, but calls the Camel-mover an Elephant, this pretty much rules out that I can use the Elephant glyph for this Modern Elephant.

So I agree that it is a lot of merit in the idea that all pieces with Knight moves should look 'knightish'. But I only have a limited number or knightish images available amongst the XBoard built-in pieces, (and even fewer in WinBoard). These are Knight, masked horse (Nightrider), Unicorn, Knight-Rook chimera (Chancellor), Zebra and winged horse. And the Zebra does not seem very suitable. So that leaves the winged horse (unfortunately not available in WinBoard) for the Elvish Queen. But in mythology Pegasus is a winged horse, so having another piece named Pegasus rules this out. And the winged-horse glyph cannot be used for that other piece either, because it would subvert the idea that knightish glyphs should alert people to the fact the piece can move as a Knight. So the original naming really interfered badly with the possibility to choose suitable images. This is why I suggested the name change.

I am not very familiar with the mythology of the Phoenix, but I don't associate it with a very powerful creature, like a dragon). I imagine it as a pieceful, innocent creature, no match for an eagle. I doubt anyway whether the logic of assiging similar functions (such as archers, spell-casters) to corresponding units of the different armies will be very helpful to prospective players (or would even be noticed by them). It just makes it difficult to find names that they would easily remember.

BTW, I started looking into the WinBoard e.p.-capture problem, and it is pretty tough. One unforseen problem is that assignment of e.p. capture rights reflects on detection of 3-fold repetitions. Presence o frights would not make it a repetition, but then the rights should only be granted when there actually is a Pawn that can make the e.p. capture. This means I cannot assign e.p. rights for every double push. But whether there is a Pawn that can make the capture depends on how enemy Pawns move. I guess we don't care much whether WinBoard will fail to detect some repetitions in variants with non-standard Pawns, but I should be careful not to break anything for orthodox Chess.


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