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Because WinBoard depends on true-type fonts for user-supplied piece images, there are some TTF available. These could of course be used in texts as well. (They are not figurine fonts, however; they do not contain any normal letters. So they are more comparable to fonts like WingDings.)

I made one such font ('Ultima') myself; it should be contained in the download for the WinBoard Alien Edition.

Another font with fairy pieces is 'WinboardF'. Unfortunately the download link for it there doesn't seem to work anymore. I have it installed on my laptop, though, so I could e-mail it to the guy if he wants it.)

Of course there also is the XIANGQI font that comes with the standard WinBoard distribution. But I guess it is only of interest for those who write Chinese.

Oh, and there also is a font with pieces for Superchess, obtainable from their website http://www.superchess.nl/indexengels.htm (click the 'Superchess Software' link). They are a bit picky on how you may use it, however.

Hi, I'm the person who sent that email.

I would be interested in that WinboardF font, though I'm not actually
specifically looking for fonts. What I'm trying to do is prepare to
propose that the Unicode Consortium encode symbols for heterodox chess in
Unicode, and that means finding evidence of use, particularly in a text
context.

Diagrams aren't usually considered "text" because they're
two-dimensional in nature. I can make the argument that figurine notation
is defined as using the symbols used to represent pieces in a diagram to
represent the same pieces in notation, so evidence of common use in
diagrams shows a need for use in text, though I'm not sure whether that
will fly.

It has not been difficult to find evidence of fairy chess piece symbols, by
which I mean the standard chess symbols rotated 90°, 180°, and 270°,
neutral (half black, half white) symbols, and (to a lesser extent) the
equihopper symbol. There are books and magazines using them; the 180°
turned queen even shows up in running text in the Oxford Companion to
Chess. So I think I've got a good case there. But AIUI variant authors and
players tend to prefer distinct symbols for each piece, rather than rotated
"placeholders". I've had much less success on that front.

Unicode specifically rejects "It'd be useful" as the sole argument for
including a symbol: it has to be *in regular use*. So I'm looking for
precedent For that reason, I'm mostly limiting myself to relatively
well-known and widely played variants and variants of significant
historical interest, rather than recent inventions. So far I think the
strongest case can be made for the rook-knight and bishop-knight compounds,
since they are used in several games with significant followings, and the
symbols are of fairly straightforward construction (e.g. while there are
several ways of forming a symbol that combines a knight and rook, they are
easily recognized as equivalent), and they're even used on Wikipedia. The
rook-knight symbol even appears in a U.S. patent document (for Gothic
Chess), though instead of a bishop-knight fusion that document uses a
special Archbishop symbol. The special piece symbols used in Omega Chess
are also used on Wikipedia, but since that's a commercial variant I'm not
sure whether there are any intellectual property restrictions there.
Shatranj has fairly standardized piece shapes, which are sometimes used as
symbols, but modern symbols seem to be used more often (Murray uses both
sets for shatranj pieces in apparently arbitrary fashion), so it's hard to
say whether they would be considered a semantically distinct set or just a
choice of font. Then there are historical variants like Tamerlane, Courier,
and Grant Acedrex. I'm not sure if there are any standardized symbols
there.

Xiangqi, janggi, and shogi aren't really in my scope, since they use
Chinese characters instead of symbols, and the relevant characters are
already in Unicode.

Ultima symbols would be a tough sell, I think. The fact that the symbols in
that font don't resemble the symbols for the same pieces in, say, the
Alfaerie set, suggests that there really isn't a stable symbology for
Ultima/Baroque yet.

An update:

Getting close to a complete draft proposal, I think. It's dominated by
fairy chess problem symbols, since it's easier to demonstrate that they
are in use than variantist, distinct per-piece symbols. Which shouldn't be
surprising, since a game exists whether it's written down or not, but
chess problems really don't; they *are* their written form.

On the variantist side, so far I am including the bishop-knight,
rook-knight, and queen-knight compounds (using the generic descriptors
since the name situation is so garbled). I'm currently debating with
myself whether I should include shatranj symbols in the proposal. I have
found one document that uses them in text: Sonja Musser Golladay's paper
on the Alfonso manuscript. Since the shatranj piece shapes are nearly
unrecognizable as their modern counterparts (with the exception of the
knight and pawn), I could possibly make a case, though basing it on a
single text is a bit weak.

The manuscripts that describe Tamerlane Chess apparently contain no
illustrations of the added pieces. Any symbols for those pieces are modern
innovations, and I can't find any examples in text, just diagrams. The
other Shatranj Kamil variants are similar. Grant Acedrex is in a slightly
better position, since the Alfonso manuscript itself does at least provide
symbols for the pieces. But again, no use in text: Musser Golladay's paper
uses symbols for the basic shatranj pieces in notation but full names for
the pieces specific to GA. Even her move diagrams use pawns and promoted
pawns as stand-ins. Courier Chess is like GA, and it is also unclear to
what extent its pieces should be unified with the shatranj and/or modern
chess pieces.

I did create a font with pieces for chess variants but doesn't include
most kind of rotated pieces, and it is in METAFONT format so not for screen
fonts. It does not use Unicode though (and as far as I am concerned it does not need to.)

AIUI unless you're using XeTeX, Unicode isn't even really an option for
METAFONT. Just out of curiosity, does your MF font work with the Diagram
package? I admit I don't know TeX very well.

The title of this thread is a bit misleading. My initial question wasn't
really about fonts, it was about publications. Anybody with the time and
inclination can make a font full of whatever symbols they like, but
existence of a font is not evidence of use in and of itself.

BTW, does anybody know how to contact Armando H. Marroquin? I have some
questions about his Chess Alfonso font. Musser Golladay's paper uses it,
but the promoted pawn symbol in that paper doesn't seem to be in the
freely available version of the font.

I don't know if it works with the Diagram package; I use Plain TeX (and with DVI output format) and not LaTeX, but I did write a chess macro package (with many options that may be suitable for use with some chess variants too) for Plain TeX which uses my font by default.

I do not know which fonts are used and how much, nor do I know how to contact Marroquin.