The new look for the BDS Website continues to be implemented. I have recently redesigned the results page from the general search and this morning I put live the redesigned problem display page. I hope both of these are improvements and will make things easier for Meson users. The problem display page is the biggest change. As a taster of this new page take a look at this #3 by the late Byron Zappas.
I have added piece counts, a field for original publication date (where known), a field for ‘other’ information (intended for any important information, such as dedications, that doesn’t fit into other fields) and the FEN string. This latter uses ‘N’ and ‘n’ for knight, which may appear inconsistent with the notation used in the solutions, but I hope it will be more convenient for the majority of users who wish to copy and paste it into other software.
The biggest change on this page is to the solution. This is now in the form of a tree with expandable leaves. Every line that starts with a plus sign (‘+’) may be expanded by clicking on it, when the plus sign will be changed to a minus sign ('-'). After expansion clicking on it will close it up. This new approach will hide the solution from those who wish to solve and will also serve to hide parts of the solution that may be unimportant.
Next for redesign will be the pages used for the drill-downs during access by composer or source.
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6 comments:
I think it would be a good idea to adjust the 'FEN' line: drop the 'FEN' and keep just the Forsyth data.
The reason is that you are not following the FEN standard. You can't leave out side to move, half-move and full-move clock, and still call it FEN.
A FEN descriptor has six fields, and there is no provision for 'unknowns' as far as I can make out. Also note that '-' means 'castling is not allowed' or 'en passant is not legal', and that may very well be overstating the case for compositions.
FEN really only works for chess games, or positions when past history is fully known.
Thanks, Anders, for the comment. You are right, of course: I shouldn't call it FEN without it being FEN.
So, I have adjusted the display to show full FEN as defined by Wikipedia.
I did know that '-' and '-' stood for castling and ep not allowed respectively and these screen fields are derived from fields in the database, where I record legal castlings and pawns that may be captured ep on the first move. The final two fields are the same defaults as used by ChessBase for stored positions not within a game. Having the side to play is a bonus for those who can never remember who is to play. The most common question I get at solving tournaments is - "Which side plays first?"
I know all of this is not normal problemist convention, but I am mindful of users who will want to copy and paste straight from the screen into software that will be FEN-aware, but not Problemist-aware!
There is at least one visually-impaired Meson user who will find these FEN additions very useful. If others don't need them, they can easily ignore them or just copy the Forsythe.
How can we expand the full solution tree with a single click?
Harry
>>How can we expand the full solution tree with a single click?<<
You can't!
By 'full solution' do you mean set play, tries and keys? I guess not, as all of that together was not wanted and was one of the reasons why I made the recent changes. Do you mean that you want to see all of a 'phase' (set, try, or keys) at once by a single click? Such a thing should be possible. Let me know.
Sorry for the confusion; yes, I mean all of a phase at once.
Ok Harry. I'll get that done.
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