Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

The red in the source seems to be caused by the updated comment display style.  In listcomments.php, comments are completely dealt with by DIV's; in displaycomment.php, there is a stray table surrounding the single comment's DIV.  My source viewer balks at various html codes inside a TABLE but not inside a TD.  That seems to also be causing the header to appear below the comment instead of above (the DIV is floating to the top of the table).

It seems improved now for most comments. But in the comment below where I posted the diagram, there occurs a very mysterious duplication that in the end clears the diagram. When I click 'View' there it first appears as it should, but half a second or so later reverts to an empty board.

When I then look at the page source, it turns out that my entire posting is in there TWICE. Only one of those apparently gets displayed. But the link to the JavaScript there is seen for the second time even in the hidden copy, and thus also executed a second time, and this apparently kills the diagram that was created during the first execution.

The 'View' link in comments now leads to a page that is messed up thoroughly.

Okay, that's fixed.

H.G., Since I have something else to do now, this would be the time to check how it works and leave any further bug reports. Your previous comment came while I was working on fixing things, and it might not pertain to how things are currently working.

Indeed, the duplication disappeared, and the diagram shows up fine now. Many thanks!

Would it be possible to organize some of the piecegraphics on this website better, so that it can be used by the interactive diagram? I just switched the diagram in the Grant Acedrex comments to using 'Utrecht'-style pieces, just like in the main article. But the Utrecht set on this site was not useful, because it uses no transparency, but has a colored square as part of the image. So that there need to be four of every piece. And they are distinguished by 00 / 01 / 10 / 11 suffixes on the filename. The diagram expects transparency (so the background highlighting of the moves can be seen), and only two colors of every piece, distinguished by a prefix.

So I converted the pieces I needed (plus some orthodox ones) to png with transparency and w/b prefix naming. But the diagram is now using them directly from my own website. I think it would be better if the articles here are 'self-sufficient', and the images thus on the CVP website.

I can of course create a user submission on Utrecht pieces, and upload all png files to the associated membergraphics directory, but this is not an ideal place forlater referring to them, and there already is an article about those pieces (in the gif directory). Unfortunately this is not reachable from the graphics.dir/index.html page that shows a nice overview of other available graphics. Could the reworked piece images be placed in graphics.dir/utrecht? It really is a very elaborate set (if I would rework them all), andofmuch smaller size than Alfaerie (32x32 instead of 50x50), which is very useful for creating manageable diagrams for variants with large boards.

Game Courier already uses transparent versions of the Utrecht pieces. You can find them here:

http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/small/

That indeed is more like what I need. This graphics set is not mentioned at all on the graphics.dir/index.html page, though, which is why I did not find it. It seems to be one of the most extensive sets we have, so I think it definitely deserves to be mentioned there.

A small issue: the 'small' set seems to merge the Utrecht pieces with those from Jean-Louis Cazaux, and has many new pieces based on either of those. (E.g. the original Cazaux pieces are only available in white, which is a pity, because I really like those pieces, but here some also exist in black versions.) It still does not contain all the Utrecht pieces, though (e.g. no Tank or Airplane). In this particular case (Grant Acedrex) I need a Crocodile and Griffin, and these are lacking from the transparent set. I would also like to have the Utrecht version of the Lion (although I like the Cazaux version better), to conform with the diagram in the original article. Could those images be added (e.g. as W/BCrocodile.gif, W/BGriffon.gif and W/BLionU.gif)? I currently have them as .png, but I can convert them to .gif, and send you a zip file with the missing pieces,if you are OK with that.

[Edit] I put a tar ball with some additional transparent 'Utrecht' pieces (properly renamed to blend in with the existing images) on my website at http://hgm.nubati.net/variants/small.tar.gz. Could you please merge those with the .../graphics.dir/small directory? I also posted tar balls with the XBoard piece images rendered as 50x50 and 33x33. I hope that you also want to install those in .../graphics.dir/xboard50 and .../graphics.dir/xboard33 directories.[/Edit]

A completely different issue:

Could you make a Unix-style file-system link to the file .../membergraphics/MSinteractive-diagrams/betza.gif with the name betza.js (i.e. do "ln betza.gif betza.js" in that directory)? Then that JavaScript file would occur under two names in that directory, and I could use the .js link to refer to it from HTML pages (so the diagram would work in the Chrome browser). While I could (hopefully) still update it through the .gif link by uploading new versions.(At least if the upload server script would work by overwrite, rather than deleting the old version, and creating a new one.)

Some other weirdness: When I look at the Scirocco article (the original one from 1999, not the revised version), I see some comments. When I then click 'List all comments and ratings', I see indeed more comments. But the last one of the original display is not amongst those!

Okay, that's fixed. It was treating the empty string as an element of the blacklist.

Except for the bear, which was elongated and in only one color, I added your other images to the small directory. I cannot run a Linux shell on the website. So I may have to create a link through the cpanel. But Waterfox won't run right now. So I'll reboot after writing this.

I couldn't find a way to add a link with the cpanel. So I added a copy of betza.gif called betza.js.

Thanks! I now changed the URL in all diagrams I posted these past months in the article comments to point to that .js instead of the .gif, and can confirm that these now work in the Chrome browser as well. I will also have the Design Wizard for interactive diagrams generate the link to the .js.

Only problem is that I cannot update the script anymore. But fortunally I fixed a bug that crept in (and made zoning of the board incompatible with promotion choice, something that was not apparent when I introduced the zoning to do Xiangqi) yesterday, so what we have now should be in good shape. If in the future I need to cater to new demands of some variant with unusual rules, I can always have that refer to the .gif for trying it out.

An alternative would be to add *.js files to the allowed file types for uploading as 'membergraphics'. I don't see much harm in that, as it would always be possible to achieve the same thing by including the same script in the HTML page itself. Normally you would do that for scripts that are specific to the page. It is just that the script for the diagram is not very small, and shared between dozens of pages, that makes it desirable to share it.

H. G.,

I don't want to allow each and every contributor to upload .js files, but I could email you the FTP password, so that you can upload Javascript files yourself.

Well, having ftp access would certainly make me happy. An alternative that does not delegate that much power would be to always allow uploading of a file with an already existing name, to overwrite it.

An alternative that does not delegate that much power would be to always allow uploading of a file with an already existing name, to overwrite it.

Okay, I updated memberupdate2.php to do that. Try it out and let me know whether it is working properly.

It does not seem to work.

I tried to upload a betza.js with improved handling of promotion choice (where in case of promotion to captured pieces only the available pieces get highlighted in the table, rather than all elegible types), but the diagrams that refer to betza.js still do promotion in the old way (even although I refreshed them with Shift pressed to make sure they would not use any cached files).

When I try to upload the file it does allow me to enter the betza.js through browsing. After I press 'Upload File' I get an entirely blank page with "http://www.chessvariants.com/index/memberupload2.php" in the address bar, where before it used to show the image and give the URL needed to use it.

It should work now. I just fixed and tested it.

I can confirm that it works now. I have uploaded the updated betza.gif script, and the diagrams using it now only highlight the pieces in the legend table that you actually have in hand, when you have to make a promotion choice in a game where you can only promote to captured (or initially held) pieces. (E.g. Spartan Chess.)

Thanks!