Palview and PGN CommentsIntro CommentsBecause Palview is a publishing tool, it provides an extensive set of options that can be used from within PGN comments. In fact, the comments themselves can have more or less significance, depending upon where they occur. For example, some chess database software, ChessBase for example, allows you to provide a comment before a move, as well as after. This means that the very first move in a game can have a comment before it. Palview treats all comments before the first move of the game as a special Game Introduction comment (or comments if there are more than one). What Palview does is write this comment to the Html file using a special CSS class named .pintro. This provides the webmaster with the option of providing special formatting for these comments. For example, you might use a different font and italics as in the example below:  For more information on the .pintro CSS class, please see the section Palview and Cascading Stylesheets. Linebreaks and Multiple ParagraphsAs suggested above, Palview allows multiple comments to appear in a row. The program will treat each of these comments as a separate paragraph. But these multiple paragraphs will only appear in the Html page as separately indented if the INI option linebreaks is set to on, otherwise they will appear to be merged together with no linebreaks. The ability to treat separate multiple PGN comments as paragraphs is especially useful for deeply commented games. In this case, you would likely want to use an IFRAME for the game itself by using the htmltype = iframe. Chess Moves in Different LanguagesPalview also performs special processing inside the comments themselves. For example, the program will look for chess moves in the comments and will replace the piece letters P,N,B,R,Q,K with the pcletters from the selected language. So if you have set the pcletters = "BSLTDK", then Palview will replace each instance of a chess move using PNBRQK with BSLTDK. Figurines Within CommentsThe program will also look for the special instances of a slashed piece letter as in: \P \N \B \R \Q \K and will replace each of them with either a figurine, using the special .pf CSS class, or with the appropriate piece letter from pcletters. These special slashed piece letters are used to provide figurines where they are not actually a part of a chess move inside a comment. For example, you might write something like:
35 ... Kxg7
{And after this move we are left with a
drawn \K + \P vs \K + \P ending.}
In the above example, if figurines is on, then Palview will replace each \K and \P with the appropriate figurine using the special .pf CSS class. Otherwise the slashed piece letter is simply replaced with the appropriate piece letter from the pcletters INI option. (For more information on the .pf CCS class, see Palview and Cascading Stylesheets. For more information on using figurines with Palview, see Palview and Figurines.) The Diagram Marker and Board CaptionPalview also looks for the special Diagram Marker command that ChessBase exports to PGN as a '#' character as the first character in a comment. Whenever Palview encounters a Diagram Marker, it will generate a static diagram of the current board position in the game. The program also allows an optional Board Caption to follow the Diagram Marker, which is surrounded by the square brackets [ and ]. The text in the Board Caption will be placed under the static diagram itself. An example is:
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6
{#[The Petroff Defense]This is the starting
position of the Petroff Defense.}
The use of the Diagram Marker, and Board Caption, is really intended for the special htmltype = static page, but it is also legal in the other page types and will generate the appropriate static diagram. This is almost never useful except in rare instances. But for the static page, the Diagram Marker is the only way to get Palview to generate a diagram for you. So it is an indispensable feature for static pages. New PGN Command ExtensionPalview has begun to take advantage of a new extension to PGN championed by Alan Cowderoy and DGT's Ben Bulsink. The new extension provides a method for inserting new PGN data or new publishing commands into the comment of a game. Essentially, the idea is to enclose the command and its operand(s) inside square brackets and to prefix the command name with a '%' character. These commands can only appear inside a comment, this way older software will still be able to read the PGN file. Here is an example: The Inline Annotator
1. e4 e5
{I would have played 1... c5 here, myself. [%anno "Kasparov"]}
The above example shows how the new PGN extension is used. Palview understands the %anno command extension, which we call an Inline Annotator, and will replace the entire [%anno "Kasparov"] with a SPAN of Kasprov's name using the .ianno CSS class. This allows for comments from multiple sources to be correctly attributed to each of the annotators. An example of the Inline Annotator's .ianno CSS is:
.ianno {font-style: italic; background-color:floralwhite;}
Notice in the above example that the CSS is used only to set the Annotator's name in italic and to provide a background color to highlight the name. This is a typical use of the .ianno CSS class. Also note that this .ianno class is new to Palview4. Previously, Palview3 used to use the .panno class. This was changed so that Inline Annotator's could have their own CSS separate from the game's Annotator, provided by the Annotator Tag, namely the .panno class. The Captioned DiagramAnother possibly useful command extension is the Captioned Diagram. With this new feature you can embed a diagram directly inside a comment. When Palview generates an Html-JavaScript page for you, your viewers will see a small chessboard image inside the comment that has a hand pointing to it. They can click on this image and the embedded diagram will be shown on the chess board along with any caption that you may optionally provide. Below is an example of what your viewers would see.  Palview remembers the 'state' of the game, so showing a Captioned Diagram does not affect the playing of the moves. Your viewers can simply click on the Forward button Entering a Captioned Diagram requires you to provide the FOR of the position (the FOR is just the position part of a FEN) along with the optional caption text. Here is the Movetext portion of the PGN file that was used to create the above game:
{This very short example illustrates the use of the new
Captioned Diagram feature. You can insert a CD in any PGN
comment. If you click on the small board square the CD
will be shown on the chess board.}
1. e4 {Here is a Captioned Diagram:
[%cap 8p4ppp82pp484P3PP3PPP8,"The Hanging Pawns"]
And here is the same caption with some important squares marked:
[%cap 8p4ppp82ppO32VVX31P2P3P4PPP8,"Important Squares"].}
1-0
The actual Captioned Diagram command has the format: [%cap FOR,"caption string"] In the above, the "caption string" is optional, but if you provide one you must separate it from the FOR of the position using a comma. The caption string must be surrounded in quotes. The FOR portion of the Captioned Diagram does not require you to add the '/' character between the ranks of the chess board position. You can add them if you wish, for the sake of clarity, but they are not mandatory. Special Board MarkersYou will also notice in the above diagram that a number of the board squares have been marked with a dot, cross, and circle. These can be used to mark special squares. You use these special board markers just as if they were new piece types and you enter their piece letter into the FOR just like any other piece. In the FOR that was used to create the position, the dot is a 'V', the cross is an 'X', and the circle is an 'O' (upper case o). For further information about the new PGN extension, see the document PGN Supplement. For more information on FEN and FOR, see the PGN Standard . |
and the next move in the game will be played.
symbol to indicate what a player is threatening. But this indicates what will happen if the opponent takes no action to thwart the threat. In other words, if the opponent does not move.
, it will toggle into the Step mode, 
, and we can use the Forward button, 