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Hi!

Thank you for your feedback. I’ve been browsing the Piececlopedia within the last days, with the following results:

1. From the pieces you’ve mentioned, I couldn’t find the Bird (does it equal the Raven?), Panda, Bear, Sow, Boar or Zemel. Where are they used?

2. Generally I tend to unify pieces with same or similar behavior, if they are not used in the same game (which would make even the slightest difference necessary to be representable). E.g. I haven’t included a Chariot, because I didn’t see a relevant difference to the rook. For the same reason, I don’t see what a special Korean Elephant is needed for, as it seems to never contrast with the “normal” Elephant. (Please correct me if it is needed in some context.)

3. I found the following combined pieces:

• Marshall / Chancellor / Empress (Rook + Knight)
• Cardinal / Paladin / Princess (Bishop + Knight)
• Amazon (Queen + Knight)
• Carpenter (War Engine + Knight)
• Centaur (Man + Knight)
• Canvasser (Rook + Camel)
• Caliph (Bishop + Camel)
• Wizard (Ferz + Camel)
• Waffle (Wazir + Elephant)
• Alibaba / Spider (War Engine + Elephant)

Would it make sense to encode Empress and/or Princess separately, i.e. is the difference between royal and non-royal variants relevant in any game?

4. Some other pieces I tend to include:

• Berolina Pawn
• Sergeant
• Man / Cleric / Commoner
• Champion / Hero
• Vao (but don’t know yet what it should look like)
• Maybe Ram / Advancer, Basilisk, Crocodile, Dragon, Monkey, Rhino, Squirrel / Castle, Windmill, Withdrawer.

5. I recognized that some existing symbols can be used for some pieces:
U+25CF ● BLACK CIRCLE and U+25CB ○ WHITE CIRCLE for Orphan and Rose
U+25C6 ◆ BLACK DIAMOND and U+25C7 ◇ WHITE DIAMOND for Friend
U+2605 ★ BLACK STAR and U+2606 ☆ WHITE STAR for Joker
U+2691 ⚑ BLACK FLAG and U+2690 ⚐ WHITE FLAG for Flag

There are also quite a lot of other black and white symbols you can use for unencoded pieces, e.g. ■□▲△♥♡⚉⚇⬟⬠⬢⬡⬮⬯

6. David, I agree with you that we should try to get the most important ones first, but I’d like to have an overview of how many pieces we will finally have, and what kinds of pieces. This is needed for grouping and ordering. E.g. I tend to group the combined pieces together. So if we, e.g., leave out the waffle in the first run, I would still like to reserve a codepoint for it next to the other combined pieces. Otherwise they will be scattered all over the PUA, with no cognoscible order.

Regards, Alexander