I have copied a non finished game from my each grand apothecary diagrams. I have put it in a notepad text file. I am trying to copy it back but it does not work with edge. Firefox does give me that error though. Look try it for yourself:

The alert game:

{123456789} 1. f7 i8 2. h6 h8 3. f6 g9 4. e7 Gi10 5. Nf5 Ni9 6. Gi6 Mi12 7. Ic6 Vk7 8. Ixi12 Gxi12 9. Jh4 Oj9 10. Gg6 Vk8 11. i6 Vk9 12. Oc6 d10 13. i7 Wk10 14. ixh8 Wxh8 15. Gj6 Oh9 16. Gj8 Vj9 17. Wk5 Oxc6 18. Xxc6 We6 19. Jxe6 Vxj8 20. Nh4 Ij9 21. Je4 Gi10 22. Bg6 Ik8 23. Wxi8 Gxi8 24. k7 Vl9 25. Jxi8 Fk9 26. Vj6 Fxg6 27. Uxg6 Ii10 28. Vj8 Vxj8 29. Jxi9 Nh11 30. Jxh11 Qxh11 31. kxj8 Ixf7 32. Uxf7 Yxf7 33. Ne5 Ye9 34. Jxa12 Jxa12 35. Fj7 Bxj5 36. Rlk3 g10 37. Rk8 Ff9 38. Fb6

The classic game:

{123456789} 1. f7 i8 2. h6 h8 3. f6 g9 4. e7 Ek10 5. Nf5 Ne10 6. i7 Yh9 7. ixh8 gxh8 8. Uxh8 Bg9 9. Ui9 Hh11 10. Ng7 Yi11 11. Hh4 Yg10 12. Uj8 Eh10 13. Ul9 Ei9 14. Uh5 Yc8 15. Ee4 Ya7 16. Fd5 f8 17. exf8 Bxf8 18. Fb7 Bd6 19. Le5 Bxe5 20. dxe5 Nd8 21. Fd5 Le10 22. Hj6 Lf10 23. Nh9 Eh10 24. Nxf10 exf10 25. Uxk11 Ii12 26. Xd7 Fi10 27. Uxi12 Jxi12 28. Xxd8 Fxj6 29. Xxj6 d9 30. Ni5 Uk10 31. Eeh4 Je11 32. Je4 Ng9 33. f8 Ni6 34. Exi6 Bxi6 35. j5 Bk8 36. l7 Ff9 37. Rab3 Yb9 38. Txk8

The modern game:

{123456789} 1. f7 i8 2. h6 h8 3. f6 g9 4. e7 Ci10 5. Nef5 Nh9 6. Je4 Sh11 7. Jf4 d9 8. i5 Nee9 9. Sh4 We10 10. g6 Si11 11. Wh5 Wd7 12. Jd5 Wc8 13. Je4 Wd7 14. Sg5 Wxe4 15. Dxe4 Nk9 16. Dxd9 Cd10 17. Da8 b9 18. Db6 Nc8 19. Dc7 Shf9 20. Dd5 Yb11 21. Si4 Sk8 22. Xi7 Sj7 23. Xxi8 Sxg5 24. Nxg5 Nxi8 25. h7 Nk9 26. b7 Nb10 27. We6 Sg10 28. Xc6 Yh9 29. Ya6 Yj8 30. Nh4 e10 31. Nhi6 Yh9 32. Fc7 Sh11 33. Ck5 b8 34. Fg8 Te11 35. Lh4 Ni7 36. Yh3 f9 37. Fi8 Xi9 38. Cxi7

OK, I see. When I only paste the first Pawn moves, it works. As soon as I include 4... Gi10 in the alert version it throws up a popup complaining about an illegal move. When I include the number between braces it ignores the pasting entirely.

I suspect that there is something wrong setting up the position, since these are shuffle games. I will have a look at this.

And probably the same goes for the other two games!

OK, I found (and corrected) two problems in the Diagram script. When I added the possibility to include comments (enclosed in braces) in a pasted game some time ago, I had broken the reading of the shuffle specifier at the start of the game (which is also in braces). That was not the only problem, however: when the Diagram of a shuffle game is first shown, it displays as the 'nominal position', without any shuffling. But the initial value of the random seed used for shuffling (123456789) does not correspond to 'no shuffling'. But it was saved with the game. And if the game then was pasted back it was taken seriously, and the corresponding shuffle was executed. For now I solved this by suppressing shuffling if the random seed is 123456789.

I think this should solve all problems in the Diagram script. (Be sure to flush your browser cash or you would keep using the old script!) But there still is a problem with the games you posted: if I paste the 'alert' game into the Diagram on your alert page, it complains that Gi10 is an illegal move. And as far as I can tell, it indeed is one: G means Kangaroo there, which is defined as HFD, and  it starts (unshuffled) at h12. So Gi10 is an N jump. Since there is another Kangaroo on the board, and the specified destination square is illegal for both, it has no idea which of the two should move there, and throws up an 'ambiguous illegal move' error.

With the G move it could mean that I have personally made an illegal move! Sorry for that

While it is certainly possible to make illegal moves in the Diagram, this cannot be the full explanation. Because the Diagram would also see that move is ambiguous during generation of the notation, and then would disambiguate it. So when I move that Kangaroo to i10 in the position where the loading of the game stops, it adds the move Ghi10 to the game, rather than Gi10. It constructs the notation such that its parser can always read it back unambiguously. It will even allow different piece types to have the same piece ID, and will already add disambiguators if two pieces with the same ID can go to the same square. (This can be useful when you implement location-dependent moving by defining different types to be used in different locations for what is shown as the same piece.) A slight difference with standard notation in orthodox Chess is that it disambiguates based on pseudo-legality only, and won't rule out alternative moves just because they expose you to check. This because not all variants do have a checking rule.

Hello, HG

Have you made any progress with the saving and loading in the interactive diagrams?

I thought the changes I made on August 1 fixed that? As long as the game you try to past is legal and unambiguous, of course.

Ok, I'll try it

What can be done to play the game Avatar Chess online?

In addition to defining normal chess, but without normal promotion (maxPromote=0), you would have to embed a JavaScript function WeirdPromotion that would promote every piece (except King) to the type that belongs to the destination square.

Thank you H.G., that's how it will be for sure. Sounds to me like from another star. It means to me that I will not be able to do it on my own.

I have somewhat of a dilemma concerning the move notation for castling in the Interactive Diagram. Normally King-side castling is O-O, Queen-side castling is O-O-O, both for white and black. This then corresponds to short and long castling, respectively.

But what if the Kings start closer to the a-file? Would it still make sense to keep calling the a-side the Queen side, and use O-O-O for that castling. I know that the official notation for Chess960 does this, but that is really another case, because the King there can start anywhere, but at least ends on the c-file, like in orthodox Q-side castling. So it is indeed like a long castling, only with messed-up initial position because of the shuffling.

But what if the King in a-side castling ended on the b-file. Does it still deserve to be written as O-O-O? I encountered this problem in Elven Chess, which is unusual in that it has rotation symmetry rather than reflection symmetry in the initial setup; usually variants that have that do not have castling, but Elven Chess does. The white King starts on the f-file, and moves 3 spaces to i1 on the 10-wide board. So it would be normal to call that O-O, and the castling to c1 O-O-O.

But now what for black? His King starts on e10, and castling would bring it to b10 or h10. I would be inclined to call the castling to b10 O-O now, not O-O-O.

Any ideas what we should elevate to standard here?

I don't think the O-O, O-O-O thing scales very well. What about games with an odd number of files and the King starts in the middle?

You could just use O-O for everything along with the king's destination square, like O-O b1. If you want to preserve O-O-O, it could be understood as referring to the left half of the board from White's perspective, while O-O refers to the right half.

You could just use O-O for everything along with the king's destination square, like O-O b1

You could.  But, at that point, I would ask what value the "O-O" is bringing.  Wouldn't the more standard "e1b1" also accomplish that?  Although, I guess this would address the issue with (e.g., Wildebeest Chess) where the King can move a single space and still castle.  Perhaps if either "O-O" or "O-O-O" is followed by the notation of a square, it would mean castling to that square (and there would be no difference between "O-O" and "O-O-O")

To solve the ambiguity problem in 1-step castling (or in other castlings where the castling piece can also move multiple squares on its own, such as that silly 'guarding' of the Queen in Enhanced Omega Chess), the Diagram uses the tilde instead of the hyphen (or nothing) as connecting sign for indicating castlings, like K~d1. But I like to stick to conventional SAN where this is possible.

Well, I'd like to point out the grand apothecary chess games where you may castle in four ways with 2 different pieces!

I think the most general solution is to point out both moves and then add a simple "c" for example.

I have started implementing a new feature of the Interactive Diagram, which I had already proposed a long time ago: making it generate a text description of the moves. A table with these descriptions can be made to appear anywhere on the page containing the Diagram as a 'satellite': one has to embed an empty table with id 'pieceDescriptions' in the HTML text of the page, like <table id="pieceDescriptors"></table> . The Diagram script will then locate this element when the page is loaded, and will attempt to translate the XBetza move descriptors into plain English text. Below is an example of how this would look (flush browser cache!):

Pieces

As you can see the conversion is not perfect; some XBetza descriptions are so complex that they cannot be handled (yet?). It will probably always remain possible to construct XBetza that is too complex for the converter. I am still brooding on a method for solving that; The simplest way would be to always allow the user to override the generated texts by providing a text of his own for a few selected pieces. But I must still design a mechanism for communicating such override texts to the Diagram.

I am also still open for suggestions for improving the formulation of the texts for which the conversion in principle does work. (The Betza move descriptors can be seen in the usual piece table that can be opened under the Diagram.)

I think the gold and silver descriptions are too ambiguous, since 'forward' and 'straight ahead' could be read as referring to both the orthogonal and diagonal moves. It would be clearer to switch the order of those parts of the descriptions.

Gold: steps one square diagonally forward or orthogonally
Silver: steps one square straight ahead or diagonally

Gold: steps one square diagonally forward or orthogonally
Silver: steps one square straight ahead or diagonally

Not to nit-pick, but I think it is even a little more clear like this:

Gold: steps one square orthogonally or diagonally forward
Silver: steps one square diagonally or directly forward

Not to nit-pick, but I think it is even a little more clear like this:
Gold: steps one square orthogonally or diagonally forward

That's what it says already. The reason I think that's unclear is that 'forward' could be taken as referring to the whole of 'orthogonally or diagonally' rather than just the latter part.

Hmmm... You have a point, but I think "diagonally forward or orthogonally" is awkward. I think a comma clears it up: "Gold: steps one square orthogonally, or diagonally forward". Or if you want to be certain, at the cost of some redundancy "Gold: steps one square orthogonally, or one suqare diagonally forward". Your wording is also clear, but sounds awkward to me, although I'm not exactly sure why.