Comments by benr

The [diagram] scripts are probably easy to insert, but I am preparing for
holiday travel, so I don't know when I'll get around to it.

I also noticed the browser's back button losing text from comments.  I
don't know what mechanic ordinarily preserves the text entered, so I don't
know how to accomplish it.  (Again, when I have some more spare time I
could look into it.)  I could provide a back button in our script that
would return you to the editing page and repopulate the textarea with the
text in the php variable, but the browser's back button would be much
nicer.

We received an email pointing out that there is a bug: capturing a pawn en passant doesn't transfer the captured pawn to your reserve.

I thought Charles's issue was with submitting edits to a MS page. 
Spellcheck is on the user's end though, and shouldn't affect the submission
script at all.

Perhaps there is a time limit on the submission, so that if you have a
large amount of text and a slow connection it times out while trying to run
the SQL in the submission script?

In the starting setup, a Foot is directly attached to the Torso, violating Rule 2.  Maybe you didn't mean "never directly", but rather that the required chain of limbs cannot be empty?

You use "Legs" at one point where I think you meant "Feet".

If the Head and Torso are not adjacent, but have two (or three) limbs as common neighbors, is that illegal (because of "a single Limb")?

The Sprint is very unclear.  Do the pieces block each other?  How does capturing work?  Does the edge of the board stop movement?

I received an email requesting that I ask here if anyone knows about this four player Korean chess shown on Youtube: link

"I have tried to infer rules for Korean chaturaji -- that is how it is titled on the webpage -- because I have found no other site that describes it. Strangely the video seems to suggest a program for playing this game.

There is mention on Wikipedia of a historical Korean grand chess, Gwangsanghui, but without rules, too: link. Your readers, I would hope, might be able to provide some details for this game?"

I am also not familiar with the Pegasus as a named piece.  As an image I am most familiar with it as representing the Bishop-Knight in Ed Friedlander's applets.  That has a nice feel to it, the Bishop move somehow adding "flying" to the knight(/horse)'s move; but in most places people somehow overlay a more traditional Bishop imagery with the knight, which I think is a better representation.

I think the Pegasus and Unicorn images (and the latter name) are just attractive choices as chess pieces, and so get reused for several different things.  I wouldn't expect any confusion to arise if you reuse them in a new way.

Can you describe exactly what happens when you try to submit an edit?

You said earlier that perhaps it's because the text boxes contain too much.
 Apparently that is possible, if unlikely: the maximum size of a "text"
type entry in our database is ~65000 characters.

I would not expect it to have anything to do with whether the item has been commented on or not.

Go is now starting to fall to computers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420579

Hmm, I get the 403 error too, whether I try to edit as an editor (which
uses a different script) or as you (which would give an error since I
haven't entered your password; either the 403 overrides that error or the
script doesn't make it to that point).

It's odd that it happens for the same script but different itemIDs.

Oh, and the garbled version of your page that shows after submitting was added by Fergus to help debug (some other?) problem(s).

The short answer is "use brackets" {...}, as Kevin correctly points out. See the third paragraph of this section of the Developer guide.

I didn't see that in the User guide; perhaps Fergus should add it there too?

The side ad appears above the rest of the content on my laptop screen
instead of to the side.  On my Chromebook, the ad appears to the left, but
there is a wide space between the ad and the content (which are left- and
right-aligned, respectively).

On both, the Favorites list on Person Information pages has been pushed to the bottom of the page (rather than on the right where it used to appear).

Lately on one of my computers, the menu items are tabbed over by varying
amounts.

The ads are now appearing more correctly on the left and right sides, but
the content is often still pushed below.  That seems to be an issue with
the ads sometimes being too wide.  Ubuntu, Firefox

With the Chromebook, the relative positioning of the left column ad and the
content is OK, but it would be nicer if the content could automatically
resize to avoid the ugly gap that's the size of 1.5 ads.  (This of course
is a lesser concern than having to scroll down a page to see the page
contents.)

Emailed

Re: missing comments

They are viewable directly:
http://www.chessvariants.com/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=32196
http://www.chessvariants.com/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=32198

I'm not sure why listcomments.php is skipping over them...

What happens if a player does not start with four cards of their own color?

What happens if a player (or both) never puts a king on the board?

Why are the cards facedown?  When are they turned face up?

What happens to cards in the thrones?

As written, when you draw a card it is just put into the discard pile...

It seems very rare for a good alternating run of cards to be available from the 20 in play.

Is there a distinction between the throne pile and a piece on that square?

You use a different definition of "diagonal" than in the usual hex games, and perhaps that should be mentioned early on.  But more importantly, you seem to be using the usual definition of diagonal in your description of the horse's movement.

Does a soldier ON the river have the increased movement pattern?

I encourage you to fix the chariot's image when possible.

Thanks for clarifying the text.  A few more questions:

Is it true that a stack of at least three cards cannot transfer away one of its middle cards?

Is the throne square not able to be occupied by pieces, just the victory condition stack?

It seems that any nontrivial stack of cards will be hard to move without the opponent moving it back (but not to the same location)...?

Is there no (Chesslike) capture in this game?

Are 3-10 "similar" to 2 in the sense that a 5+ has no movement power?

Paolo, I have just responded.

(We seem to occasionally go through long periods with no emails, during
which I tend to get out of the habit of checking the account.  Sorry for
the delay.  And Charles, there was a period before I joined that the emails
were more or less completely unread.  If there's something specific I
should go back and find, let me know.)