multilang = on | off | extended
default: off

The multilang command is used to provide a drop down SELECT box under the controlpanel that will allow your visitors to your page to dynamically select the language of their choice for viewing the moves of the game. This feature is only supported by Internet Explorer 4+ and users of other browsers will not see the SELECT box (it is hidden from them). In this first example you can see the page as it would normally appear using the English language.

Here is the same page after choosing German from the SELECT box. Notice that all the moves of the game have be rewritten using the German piece letters. The move under the board in the board caption is also rewritten.

This final example is only available with multilang = extended. In this mode, Palview3 will add the additional support of the excellent Alpine figurine fonts. In this example the Linares Figurine font was selected.

The multilang feature was added for the use of international chess sites for displaying mostly blank, or unannotated games (as in the above examples). It should prove to be a nice feature for new games that are shown on a daily basis but without annotations. If you have commentary added to the game, Palview3 will not be able to read any moves in the comments dynamically and change them. This is the reason why we recommend this feature for unannotated games only.

The special option of multilang = extended, that allows the use of figurines, can only be taken advantage of by those visitors to your page that have one of the fine Alpine Figurine fonts installed on his computer. Other viewers of the page will only see the English piece letters if they select any of the Alpine Figurine fonts form the SELECT list.

Palview will attempt to set the starting language of the SELECT based upon the pcletters that you have set. For example, the English piece letters, "PNBRQK", will make Palview start with English in the SELECT. But "BSLTDK" will force Palview to start the SELECT with German.

One final note of caution. Do not attempt to use this feature with Live game broadcast! Each time the page is reloaded the language setting will be lost. This will cause undue consternation to your visitors. It may be possible at some point to make it possible to use this feature for Live broadcasts, but for now we recommend you use the default pcletters setting for the English piece names.

For more information on using the Alpine Figurine fonts with Palview, see Palview and Figurines.

We would like to thank Alpine for their great collection of chess fonts which we have supported in Palview3. For more information on these fine fonts and how to obtain them, please visit their site at Alpine.