Chris Lott wrote: Hi!
> Tangentially, what would be extremely useful to me would > be the ability to export games/positions as playable > boards embeddable in blogs and web pages... I see this point, don't get me wrong here. However, I see some techicalities that do not make it as simple as it seems at first. > most of the solutions out there now are either proprietary > to a site or not particularly usable. I understand this > would probably need to be tied to some kind of javascript > libraries that a user might upload or something... You'll probably get into some trouble with embedding in a Blog if you need to much external sources or real world code. Otherwise you could use e.g. the MyChess Viewer. Its quite easy to embedd using the code below. However, it requires you to be able to upload a PGN file somewhere and the JS code. (I'm not sure if you can use http://something for the gamefile and/or viewer classes, would be worth a try.) I'd wonder if this is possible in a Blog or CMS kind of thing _easily_ and by _default_. In case you can really add real HTML to your blogs contents and have the ability to link up "with some java script" you can also use the code generated by Scid using "Export to HTML and JavaScript". This also gives you a playable game, for smooth embedding you'd just need to cut off the header which makes it it's own page or use the page as framework for your publication. The JS could be moved to some remote host and living on your web hosting service (see e.g. NICBase for a sample). Still, again you'll have to put up some real world code or link it into your page. I think this is the main problem here. Most likely, some Ajax solution as it is e.g. used by ShredderChess to provide the daily puzzles would be more suitable, as the footprint on your side would be much smaller. Again, this would require your Blog to allow you to add real code to the content, some <iframe>, but not as much as in the JS example outlined above. I can imagine this is allowed as the potentially malicous code is outside of the Blogs area of influence, therefore the Blog hoster is (most likely, lawyers usually have funny ideas about such things) not responsible for the action of this code. For your viewing idea most likely the best solution would be some kind of http://somwehere.view.this/frontdoor.php?gameid=myGameID kind of thing which you could embedd again in an <iframe> The backend could IMHO be Scid, in principle. This is (not yet?) done, but I think it would be possible. Again, some solution that runs the game display rendering etc. on the remote host, sending your side the image itself and maybe a clickable list of moves would be preferable. ShredderChess is again a good example, IMHO. (http://www.shredderchess.com/play-chess-online.html) Here, however, you'd need a real world server that runs the (Scid) database and a web server that runs the front door. Both up and running 7/24. This would require Scid to move up to a database server, this is not the current projects approach as a desktop application, and I think it would be possible to reuse the backend of Scid to build upon that. (This is what I meant by "stripping of the Tcl/Tk GUI".) Additionally, you're in desperate need of a (seemingly!) simple thing: myGameID. The latter would have to be persistent in the sense that it should not point to the wrong base and game or even to nirvana in case some work on the underlying database was done, plus, it should be unique for the server would need to know which game your refer to. Usual, almost unstructured, PGN header data would absolutely not be sufficient here, but I'll not go (again) into the charming aspects of persistent primary keys. For the last solution (IMHO something worth to do!) I see two points concernnig the Web2 idea. - Web2 does nothing here for you, you've to run a database server and a webserver yourself, or, you've to find someone who does that for you. The Web2 embedding is, so to say, the second order of the problem and comes with solving the problem itself for free. - If you're already at that level, well you could almost use usual WWW techniques as you've already the hard thing to accomplish yourself, and the web pages you require for your implementation are just, well, not the issue. Doing it as mentioned above most likely pays off once you have a lot of games in your base which you link from various locations. Especially, if the DB/WWW server required is open to the public and the game IDs are persistent (like DOI or URN eg.) Still, what I want to say is: it's not really enough to just add some XML I/O to Scid for communication. A lot more infrastructure would be involved here, and I could imagine that some software exists already that hosts the game base on a more common database than Scid. In the original posting MySQL was mentioned. Usually you can get a MySQL DB at your web hosting service for a resonable fee, it's standard. Running free binaries, however, might call up security issues and stuff and be much more involved. This is the main point where I think you run into problems using Scid as DB backend. (Concerning Jose, I fear it actually failes bitterly in almost any area of the database itself.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MyChess embedding: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> // make sure this browswer supports Java 1.1 if ((navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer" && parseFloat(navigator.appVersion) < 4) || (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && parseFloat(navigator.appVersion) < 4.06) || !navigator.javaEnabled()) { window.location="UpgradeBrowser.htm"; } </SCRIPT> <APPLET code="ChessBoard.class" align="baseline" width="630" height="560"> <PARAM name=pgngamefile value="current.pgn"> <!-- use custom rgb colors --> <param name=lightsquares value="9ec2ef"> <param name=darksquares value="1474a3"> <param name=background value="0e5172"> </APPLET> -- Kind regards, / War is Peace. | Freedom is Slavery. Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength. | | Theory : G. Orwell, "1984" / In practice: USA, since 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Scid-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users
