Single Comment

An interesting matter is that when I sent in my two entries for the 84
spaces contest I sent in both entries as plain text emails, the web pages
being produced by the people at the www.chessvariants.com webspace.

I saved the web page files for both Tree garden chess and Herb garden
chess to local hard disc storage.

However, when looking at them offline some time later, the diagram in the
Tree garden chess page displayed properly but the diagram in the Herb
garden chess page did not.

Investigating the source code of the pages I found that the diagram in the
Tree garden chess page is constructed directly from gif files whereas the
diagram in the Herb garden chess page is constructed with the ffen2diag2
routine.

So, if someone wishes to make a copy of the Herb garden chess page to a
local disc and then look at it later offline, perhaps saving the
collection of files to a floppy disc so as to show the game to someone
when visiting their office, there is a problem over displaying the
diagram.

Is there a way around this or does a diagram which one wishes to view
other than online need to be constructed using gif files directly rather
than use the ffen2diag2 routine?

For example, could there be a support pack for the script so that one can
download that to the local disc as well, so that diagrams can show
properly when a web page is displayed offline please?

I like the idea of using the script to make diagrams as it saves a lot of
work in producing a list of gif files.  However, there do seem to be
support issues over someone wishing to simply save a web page directly to
a floppy disc in a public library and then taking the disc to another PC
in another place for offline viewing.  I wonder if a good idea might be to
offer the algorithm of the Javascript routine in the form of a tool for
offline use in the preparing of lists of gif files so as to facilitate the
drafting of a web page which has a diagram composed of gif files in the
conventional manner.  In that way, an end user would have the advantage of
the web page being capable of being saved for offline use in a
straightforward manner and the designer of a web page would have the
advantage of easier preparation of diagrams.