The Palview3 INI File

Once you have a game, or a collection of games, in a PGN file, you can get Palview3 to generate an Html-JavaScript page for you. But just what kind of page would you like? The page that you will ultimately get is determined by the options you select. These options are set through the use of a file with the extension, INI. This is a simple text file that contains a number of lines that set the various options that are available with Palview3. For now, just accept that you can edit this INI file to change the settings. It is very easy, really.

You can create as many INI files for working with Palview3 as you need. The best way to create an INI file is to simply make a copy of an existing Palview3 INI file, rename it, and then edit the options in the new file using a simple text editor program, like Notepad. One idea is to create a separate INI file for each type of Html-JavaScript file you intend to create using Palview3. For example, if your website has a 'Game of the Day' page, you might consider creating a special INI file just for that page. You could call it gameday.INI. If you wanted to use a completely different set of options for your site's front page, you might create a special INI called frontpg.INI. For the games of your chess club's website, you might use cclub.INI.

Once you have created an INI file, all you need to do is pass this INI file to Palview3 along with your PGN file that contains the game(s) you want to use. For more information on passing files to Palview3, please read the section Palview3:The Basics.

Here is a shortened example of what a Palview3 INI file would look like:

[Palview]

% I like to use the normal page for short games
htmltype=normal
pcsize=29
stylesheet="p3style.css"
usekeystrokes=on
crosstags = elo, title, country

Your Palview3 INI file should begin with the single line:

[Palview]

This is used by other software to locate the section in the INI file where the actual options begin. After this, you can begin to list your options and the values you wish to assign to them.

You will notice that the first actual line after [Palview] begins with a percent character. Any line in a Palview3 INI file that begins with a % is considered a comment and this line will be skipped by the program when reading the INI file. Comments can appear on any line in the INI file and can be helpful as reminders about why you choose a certain option, or what other values the option could have been given.

As you can already see from above, a Palview3 INI command consists of a single line that starts with the name of a command, followed by an equal sign, followed by the value(s) to be assigned to the command. These values can be tokens, numbers, strings, and sometimes a set of tokens.

A token is just a single identifier, or name, without quotations, as in the above htmltype command where 'normal' is the token. Tokens can also appear in sets, where a number of the tokens can be chosen at the same time. In the above crosstags command, the set of tokens, elo, title, country are all being selected. In the above pcsize command the value is a number, 29. The stylesheet command uses a string value, namely "p3style.css". You will also find that a great many of the Palview3 commands are simple on and off options as the above usekeystrokes command shows.

Below is an index of all the Palview3 INI commands. You can click on the name of the command, in bold, and you will be taken to the actual command notes. After the command name you will see a list of the various values that each command accepts. For example:

crossnamepattern = full | last | short | firstlast | initlast ; default: full

In the above example, all the values are separated by the colon character. This tells you that you can select only one of the values after the = sign. At the end of the index entry you are shown the default value that Palview3 will asign to the command if none is given.

INI Options Index

autotime = 500 .. 10000 ; default: 1500 (1.5 sec)

boardimage = "imagefilename" ; default: (generated by program - brdimgXX.jpg)

boardvalign = center | top | bottom; default: center

bordercolor = "colordef" ; default: "green" (ns4comp only)

con5backtip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

con5forwardtip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

conautotip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

conbacktip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

conendtip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

confliptip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

conforwardtip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

conpanurl = "url" ; default: none

constarttip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

consteptip = "tooltip text" ; default: none

crosscharacters = "text" ; default: ="10½x" (alt. "10=*")

crosslink = on | off ; default: on

crossnamepattern = full | last | short | firstlast | initlast ; default: full

crosstablecss = "filename" ; default: none

crosstags = none | {title, elo, country} ; default: none

dbnamepattern = full | last | short | firstlast | initlast ; default: full

dbtags = none | {eco, result} ; default: none (just White - Black)

displaymode = 0 .. 3 ; default: 0

ecofilename = "filename" ; default: none

figurines = on | off ; default: off

flags = on | off ; default: on

flagurl = "url" ; default: none (note: so relative to HTM page)

footerfile = "filename" ; default: none

gameinfomode = 0 .. 1 ; default: 0 (produces short game intro)

headerfile = "filename" ; default: none

hilightcolor = "colordef" ; default: "#FFE4B5" (or "moccasin")

htmltype = normal | frames | iframe | static | database | muliframe | batch | overview | overdb ; default: normal

iframecss = "filename" ; default: none

iframewidth = 200 .. 1000 ; default: 300

imgurl = "url" ; default: "jpc" (note: relative to HTM page)

introcom = on | off ; default: on

jsfile = on | off ; default: off (off places script in HTM file)

linebreaks = on | off ; default: off

maxswissplayers = 0 .. 100; default: 0 (all)

movelinks = on | off ; default: off

movingpcs = on | off ; default: off

multilang = on | off | extended ; default: off

namepattern = full | last | short | firstlast | initlast ; default: full

ns4comp = on | off ; default: off

ns4redirect = "url" ; default: none

overviewcols = 1 .. 8 ; default: 3

padding = 0 .. 400 ; default: 20

pcletters = "letters" ; default: "PNBRQK"

pcsize = 19 | 24 | 29 | 35 ; default: 29

pgnheader = on | off ; default: on

pgnlink = 0 .. 2 ; default: 0

pgnurl = "url" ; default: none

player = "name:title:elo:country[:PerfElo]" default: none

refreshtime = 0 .. 3600 sec; default: 0 (i.e. 0 disables refresh code)

scriptloc = head | body ; default: head

ssi = on | off ; default: off;

stylesheet = "filename" ; default: none

symbolmethod = gif | text ; default: text

symtips = on | off ; default: off

symurl = "url" ; default: "jpc"

tablewidth = 0 | 75 .. 100 ; default: 0 (75 .. 100 is a percentage)

titletext = "text" ; default: none

titletype = none | players | event | both | text ; default: both (player - player Event)

tooltipboard = on | off ; default: off

tooltipcross = on | off ; default: off

tooltipopening = on | off ; default: off

usekeystrokes = on | off ; default: off

variationcolor = "colordef" ; default: "green"

Discontinued Palview2 Commands

A number of INI options that were available in Palview2 are no longer available in Palview3. But the features that these discontinued options provided are still largely available but are provided by other options or through other means. Below is a list of the discontinued options along with suggestions of how to get the same feature using Palview3.

database = on | off ; This has become a separate htmltype = database option.

pgnmoves = on | off ; This older option allowed a webmaster to have Palview2 generate an Html file of a game that did not include the actual moves of the game. You can do this in Palview3 by using the htmltype = database option.

pagebgcolor = color ; This option used to provide a background color for the page. This is now done in the CSS using the background-color as in the following example:

BODY {background-color:floralwhite;}

pagebackground = url ; This option used to provide a background image for the page. This is now done in the CSS using the background-image as in the following example:

BODY {background-image:url(background.jpg);}

imagetype = gif | transgif | jpg ; This option has now been completely discontinued. In Palview3, all the images are transparent GIFs only. This decision was necessary in order for us to allow the new feature, movingpcs, that allows visitors to your webpage to Kibitz at the board.

javaborder = on | off ; This option allowed the webmaster to decide whether or not he wanted a border around the chess board. You now use the CSS class pgbb for borders, or you can use the ns4comp option along with the new option bordercolor. Here is an example using CSS:

.pgbb {border-style:double; border-color:darkgreen; border-width:3px;}

javacolor = color ; This option was used to provide a color for the border around the chess board. This is now done using the CSS class pgbb and the property border-color, or using ns4comp along with the new option bordercolor. See above for an example of the CSS.

onevents = 1 .. 3 ; This option used to provide multiple event types for each of the controlpanel buttons. This option is now discontinued and Palview3 only provides for the single onClick event for each controlpanel button.

diagramtype = javascript | static ; This option used to allow webmasters to decide whether or not the chess board allowed the moves of hte game to be replayed or whether it remained static. If you wnat static diagrams in a page, you should use the new htmltype = static page.

writeimghtwd = on | off ; This option used to specify whether or not Palview2 should write HEIGHT and WIDTH parameters for all the piece images. This is no longer done in Palview3 since the images themselves are highly compressed GIFs.

paraindent = on | off ; This option was used to indicate indentation for each comment paragraph. This can now be done using the CSS classes pc and pm and the text-indent property. Here is an example:

.pc, .pc2 {text-indent:1em; text-align:justify; font-size:10pt;
           font-family:Verdana, serif;  font-weight:normal;}

movename = "string" ; This option allowed you to specify the language-specific equivalent of Move to be written before the move textbox. This option is discontinued.

resultflag = on | off ; This option determined whether or not the last move played in a game would append the game result to the move itself in the textbox. This is always done in Palview3.

gameintrosize = 1..5 gameintrocolor = color ; Both of these options have been replaced by a number of CSS classes that control the appearance of the infobox. For more information on this topic, please see the section The Infobox and CSS.

gamemovesize = size ; This option was used to specify the size of the text to use when writing the game moves. this is now done using the CSS class pm and the font-size property as in the following example:

.pm {text-indent:0em; text-align:justify; font-size:10pt;
     font-family:Verdana, serif;  font-weight:bold;}