Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Apr 27, 2019 04:59 PM UTC:
Ok, I've completed the change and everything seems to work. The two sides can now have different notations for the same piece, so long as player 1's is upper-case and player 2's is lower-case. When defining piece types when we aren't using this feature, the type notation is specified as it is for white and will automatically be changed to lower-case for black as it has always been so no existing code should break. To specify notations when the players use different ones, just put a slash in between. For example: "B'/b"
Here is a summary of what notations are now supported. A notation can be a single letter. It can be a single letter followed by ' or !. It can also be two letters. If the first letter of a two-letter notation conflicts with a single-letter notation, it must be prefixed by an underscore. Use of an underscore is permitted even if there is no conflict. The underscore is never displayed to the user.
Possible variant on that: use Q' etc. to indicate the pieces of black's starting army, and the plain letters for white's. That way, each symbol still means the same thing no matter which side it's on.
Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't think this is an improvement. With H.G.'s approach, the apostrophe is only necessary in the rare case where a pawn promotes to a piece from the other player's army. Also, his suggestion is backwards-compatible with Chess. In CwDA, if both players are playing the FIDEs, everything should be identical to chess. With this proposal, black's pieces would all have apostrophes. Sure, you could further stipulate that the apostrophe is only used for pieces not found in the other army, but that requires additional logic for no obvious benefit.
Or use English symbols QRBN for one color and German symbols DTLS for the other
I don't think this solves any problem. You could still have conflicts with other armies. Besides, what's German for Bede?
Ok, I've completed the change and everything seems to work. The two sides can now have different notations for the same piece, so long as player 1's is upper-case and player 2's is lower-case. When defining piece types when we aren't using this feature, the type notation is specified as it is for white and will automatically be changed to lower-case for black as it has always been so no existing code should break. To specify notations when the players use different ones, just put a slash in between. For example: "B'/b"
Here is a summary of what notations are now supported. A notation can be a single letter. It can be a single letter followed by ' or !. It can also be two letters. If the first letter of a two-letter notation conflicts with a single-letter notation, it must be prefixed by an underscore. Use of an underscore is permitted even if there is no conflict. The underscore is never displayed to the user.
Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't think this is an improvement. With H.G.'s approach, the apostrophe is only necessary in the rare case where a pawn promotes to a piece from the other player's army. Also, his suggestion is backwards-compatible with Chess. In CwDA, if both players are playing the FIDEs, everything should be identical to chess. With this proposal, black's pieces would all have apostrophes. Sure, you could further stipulate that the apostrophe is only used for pieces not found in the other army, but that requires additional logic for no obvious benefit.
I don't think this solves any problem. You could still have conflicts with other armies. Besides, what's German for Bede?