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
