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the directory /graphics.dir/svg/Greenwade is owned by root

I changed the owner to chessvariants.

Can you also check what would be a reddish color (#xxyyyy with xx > yy) that does render like grey on both Kindle and Likebook?

I'll look into that some more after I update the Diagram Designer to work better on a mobile device.

@H.G.: The pink and green colors you show here for my icons are ones I specifically chose for Zwangkrieg. More appropriate defaults would be F9F9F9 and 660088.

Also, the wildebeest should be the gnu; that's what I made it for.

And don't forget the H for hawk, E` for modernelephant, C` for wizard (and not just "moon"), B: for ballista, and G! for griffin! :)

@Fergus: Please put in my latest update; rename n2r4 to lower-case; and delete the Flash Bishop, Little Buffalo, Power Queen, Push Rook, and Relay Knight. (Those and the Bowman were meant as placeholders; the Bowman can stay because it actually looks OK.)

I might have to follow up with fixes for the n2r4 and midnight icons, which aren't showing color changes, but I'd like to see how what I sent manages before I try it (and it'll just be one or both of those two).

@H.G.: The pink and green colors you show here are ones I specifically chose for Zwangkrieg. More appropriate defaults would be F9F9F9 and 660088.

And for the square colors?

And for the square colors?

While I have a personal preference for black and red, I do understand how that causes problems on certain monochrome devices, so the light and dark browns in the default are fine, or FFDF00 and C19A6B (the piece colors in Hundred Acre Chess) if that doesn't hurt the eyes too badly.

Edit: It turns out 660088 is too dark. Try 8000FF instead.

I'm also seeing that, in compounds, the bottom of the back piece is truncated. I know that that helps with things like camel-queen, but it causes problems for others, like Relay Knight, Foursquare, Korean Pawn, Ski Bishop, etc.

This happens to be what many of the "modifier" icons (Relay, Korean, Ski) are for, so a single icon can yield dozens of pieces.

Maybe there could be a way to toggle this? Especially on a piece-by-piece basis? (Even if it's an inline variable that can follow the icon description.)

I unzipped Greenwade9.svg, and I deleted wflashbishop.svg, wlittlebuffalo.svg, wpowerqueen.svg, wpushrook.svg, and wrelayknight.svg. There is already a n2r4.svg file that is newer than N2R4.svg. If I rename it, it will replace the newer file. Would you rather I delete it instead?

There is already a n2r4.svg file that is newer than N2R4.svg. If I rename it, it will replace the newer file. Would you rather I delete it instead?

Yes, please delete the older one. And many thanks! :)

Addendum: On inspection, it works out that I am having to fix the Boar, Fox, Midnight, and Mongoose icons, and probably n2r4 as well. I'll have that ZIP in the morning.

This happens to be what many of the "modifier" icons (Relay, Korean, Ski) are for, so a single icon can yield dozens of pieces.

Such modifier icons are a novel concept; the renderer's feature for creating compound glyphs was originally intended for combining symbols for stand-alone pieces. There is some fine tuning of the combination process that can be controlled by the default.ini file in the folder with the SVG images, like demagnification and shift. The amount that is clipped away of the rear piece might even be one of those. (This was all done so long ago that I am not sure how it worked anymore.) In that case I could disable the clipping entirely for Greenwade. And if not, such a global parameter could be added.

The alternative would be to use different characters for combining with and without clipping. E.g. a + instead of a - for unclipped overwriting.

[Edit] OK, I checked out how it works. The default.ini file contained a line

compound 64 52 0 3 40

to control the combining of icons. The parameters here (all in units of 1/64 times the square size) are horizontal and vertical size of the component images, the horizontal shift between the two, a 'fudge factor', and the part of the rear icon that is shown. They are than renedered such that the rear piece touches the top of the square, and the front piece the bottom. Both would be centered horizontally, irrespective of their horizontal resizing, unless a horizontal shift is specified. (Which would then shift ther rear icon to the right, and the front icon to the left from the central position). The fudge factor has to do with fow much flipped pieces are moved vertically. (If a set clings very much to the bottom of the squares, you don't want the flipped pieces to hang from the top.) The final value describes how much of the rear piece is shown, starting from the top.

The default values for these parameters are 50, 50, 14, 0, and 64. But this changed when I copied the default.ini from Alfaerie to the Greenwade directory, in order to control the default colors. I now changed the clipping parameter back to 64. (Flush the cache to see how this affects the generated images!)

The default values for these parameters are 50, 50, 14, 0, and 64. But this changed when I copied the default.ini from Alfaerie to the Greenwade directory, in order to control the default colors. I now changed the clipping parameter back to 64. (Flush the cache to see how this affects the generated images!)

Color me happy. :)

Addendum: Even so, being able to append something like &clip=60 or &shift=15 would probably not be a bad thing, for fine-tuning purposes. That's no rush, though.

I've uploaded the corrections I mentioned in what I hope will be the last update to my set for a while.

(There are a few that I'll want to modify to make more legible, distinctive, etc., but it'll likely take a while, depending on how busy I can make myself with new entries.)

I've uploaded the corrections I mentioned in what I hope will be the last update to my set for a while.

Okay, that's done.

Once again, you have my thanks. :)

Edit: Somehow, the N2R4 didn't take. I'll see if I can figure out why, and upload it once I do.

Edit #2: Well, it's fine now. So, never mind that part.

Can you also check what would be a reddish color (#xxyyyy with xx > yy) that does render like grey on both Kindle and Likebook?

You might go with #ab5c5c. Here are some tests:

OK, I made #ab5c5c the default color for the black pieces in the Motif and Magnetic set, which in the PNG versions used brighter red.

I also added some buttons to select often used color combos for the board checkering.

This is a great way to visually draw your own board. The only complaint is that most of the pieces included are ridiculous. We are talking about pieces who will never fight in real battles. Why so many animals included? Have you ever seen animals fighting in battles, apart from horses, elephants, camels and bulls? Why not include FARMERS, PEASANTS, and other real life fighters?

That's chess for you.

The game isn't about realistic battles. How often do queens and bishops go into battle? Yet we have those in the orthodox game. Among the most popular fairy pieces are Chancellor, Archbishop, and Squirrel. Imported from Shogi, we even have the Kirin and Phoenix, which are mythical beasts. Take in the complete catalog, and there are even nearly a dozen pieces named for -- or even based on -- food items.

Go ahead and lean into the absurdity, or even rename the offending pieces if you prefer.

Here's where I wish there was a simple way to make compound icons (rather than entering it all manually)

Here's where I wish there was a simple way to make compound icons (rather than entering it all manually)

I don't see an easy solution for that, as the possible number of compound images is overwhelmingly large. So only those that would occur very frequently (such as B-N or R-N) can have their own name, and it was for this that the possibility of drawing compounds was created.

The default.ini file in the SVG directory does allow the definition of set-specific meaning of (dressed) letters in FENs, though. This to iron out different naming unorthodox pieces often have in different sets (e.g. archbishop, cardinal, KnightBishop for the BN piece, which in FEN should be B~ no matter what set is in use). Since you can combine 26 letters with 7 suffixes (' ` " ~ ^ : !) that would still allow you to define a reasonable number of easily accessible custom abbreviations. The problem is always to remember what those mean.

Yeah, I definitely can see where it'd take a bit of programming to do something like "place the front icon first, then place the back icon while pressing Ctrl as you click on the space." That's a fairly intuitive way to do it interface-wise, but I'd expect programming it to be a real bear. And while there are plenty of icons and icon combinations in my set that would fit the general rules in the main article, not one of those is represented on my sample board.

It would be hard, because it interferes with the normal operation of the ID. It would be more natural to add a compound piece to the table, just as the new version of the Play-Test Applet allows you to duplicate a piece in the table, in case you need two types with the same image.

So a way to do it could be this: You select one piece in the table (to be used as front icon, say), and then there is a button 'Combine' above the table. When you press that, the next piece in the table you click will then not be selected, but combined with the already selected piece. And this combo will be inserted just below the piece you were clicking. You can then place that new piece wherever you want, in the normal way.

From a user-interface standpoint, that's a close second to what I said. (Actually it's in third place, behind ctrl-click on the second icon, but that's neither here nor there. It's still a close pack.)

In fact, if I could use my icon library in that way with the PTA, I'd be over the moon. (I won't be looking forward to that this year or next, though, if ever.)

Well, if you would have to place ten, it would be a lot faster than what you said.

It is possible to add another one graphics set? It is also quite popular (at least it’s used in Musketeer Board Painter). There is actual version of this set called cburnett (invented & drawn by Colin M. L. Burnett, Wikipedia user). Link to zip: /membergraphics/who/CryInto/cburnett-svg.zip. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

Please read it…