Talk:Chess symbols in Unicode

Board
One of the main reasons to have unicode chess pieces is definitely to use them in text mode. Showing a full text-mode board is definitely relevant here. If the board doesn't display correctly in some browsers that is to be expected with unicode. We could replace it with an image of rendering in some terminal emulator. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SimonTheSaint (talk • contribs) 09:32, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

This is how the current version displays for me in Firefox.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by SimonTheSaint (talk • contribs) 09:36, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for being willing to discuss this. As a note, additions to talk pages should normally go at the end.  If you're starting a new section you can click the "new section" tab or link at the top of the page to start a new section at the end.  These sorts of things will become second nature after you have done more editing.
 * I'm glad that the text board displays correctly for you as I was concerned that perhaps you knew it does not display correctly and added it to the article anyway. I checked Chrome, FF and Edge in Windows 10 and Chrome in Android and the display is bad in all four cases.  I think it won't be easy to fix the display issue.  My guess is that often the chess symbols are displayed using font substitution commonly used fonts might not have chess symbol glyphs.  The substituted fonts have different widths which garbles the board display.  I hold that broken things should not be left in articles, so until it displays correctly in the commonly used browsers using common fonts, I would say it shouldn't be in the article.
 * Even if the display issue were corrected, I would still not put it in the article. The board isn't drawn correctly since a chess board has light and dark squares which are not indicated in the text display.
 * Do we have an example of any WP:N software that displays chess positions in the way that you want to demonstrate? If the answer is no then I think this is a personal exercise and would also rule it out as lacking a WP:RS reliable source.  Even if one particular program displays positions this way it may be that that fact deserves notice in an article on that particular program rather than here.
 * Finally, box-drawing characters are not chess symbols and are off topic for this article. This also rules out putting the text board in this article.  Quale (talk) 04:11, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I've seen this method used in reddit and stackoverflow posts so I thought it might be good to have a reference. I added this to show what it looks like not to suggest this is a good way of doing it. There are some similar options for cases when the background cannot be changed: https://twitter.com/wobable/status/317724259784986624 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/130885932892103650/ which we could also consider
 * For something less controversial: Let's add a version that uses changing background colors and is definitely relevant: gnuchess  SimonTheSaint (talk) 14:10, 29 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for discussing this. I still don't agree with inclusion of the Chess symbols in Unicode and since we have had two different editors remove it, I was tempted to remove it again.  But I think instead I'll leave it and we'll see if we can get someone else to register their opinion here.  If they think it should be removed it would be three to one and it could go, but if they think it should stay it would be even at two–two and it could stay pending hearing from others.  Quale (talk) 04:28, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite sure how this usually works. I think it's appropriate in this article and it doesn't really clutter up the article so I see no reason to remove it. I'm not married to it either. If you hate it just remove it again. ;) SimonTheSaint (talk) 12:19, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm still unconvinced of its value and have removed it again. DRMcCreedy (talk) 02:21, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Early comment
Weird. The chess characters have to be significantly enlarged to be the same size as letters. Thus it becomes hard to just have Nf3 where the N symbol looks good next to the f3.--Sonjaaa 19:04, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)


 * The problem is with fonts, as usual. &mdash; Monedula 19:19, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

here they simply don't show :S VodkaJazz


 * Can anyone recommend an open source font that includes these symbols? --Ken Seehart 00:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Note that :Arial Unicode MS and :Tahoma are MS proprietary and MS will not permit redistribution. I have tried :Code2000, which is very complete, but the chess pieces don't look very good (the King looks like a cow head). --Ken Seehart 00:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * According to http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/font/tahoma/list.htm the Tahoma font doesn't have the chess symbols. Where did the font come from that was used in the image? A free font that carries the unicode chess symbols would be http://mip.noekeon.org/HTMLTTChess/chess_merida_unicode.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.217.129.133 (talk) 15:07, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

What program even renders these Unicode characters correctly? Uranther 03:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Mozilla Firefox. — Monedula 06:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Any program on which you can set the font yourself... :P -- Jokes Free4Me 13:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

More symbols
Does anyone know about special notations using Unicode? I know of &#177; and &#8723;, but i would also like "+ over =" and "+ below =". Thanks in advance. -- Jokes Free4Me 13:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * They are &#x2a71; and &#x2a72; . — Monedula 06:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It might be a good idea for the article to cover these, along with the remaining Informator symbols that have been encoded in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block since Unicode 11.0. I'd do it myself but I was involved in the latter proposal so it might be considered a WP:COI. &mdash; Gwalla | Talk 00:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

You might also be interested in the Mathematical Operators and Supplemental Mathematical Operators blocks. Nellisks (talk) 15:19, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

I know I wanted one, so...
Here's a chess board:

Your welcome! Stale Fries taste better 01:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Since this board was created, Black Pawn was added to the emojis. The consequence is that black pawns tend to render differently.  Quoting from the Unicode committee report.
 * “its representation can vary through the use of the following EVSes (Emoji Variation Sequences): <265F,FE0E> ♟ (text style) and <265F,FE0F> (emoji style). The Chess symbols in Unicode page (Wikipedia), which would be where most people would find information about this issue, is insufficient in that it does not mention the EVSes that are associated with U+265F ♟ BLACK CHESS PAWN, yet the text style EVS is used in the last row of its Chess Symbols table.”
 * Consequently, the two byte code pair <265n, FE0E> should be documented on this page. Using FE0E will encourage browsers, etc. to not use emojis for black pawns only. 70.54.26.226 (talk) 22:05, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

nice. i just googled for one of these, and here i found it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.212.32.155 (talk) 04:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

good job! now we just need to implement the chess rules in CSS or JS (a CSS implementation would be better as it tethers to people running without javascript support, NoScript & the likes, while a JS implementation would be much easier to implement, IMO..) Divinity76 (talk) 14:10, 17 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Multiple (81) instances of style="width:24pt; height:24pt; border-collapse:collapse; border-color: black; border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt 0pt 0pt 1pt" yay Alliumnsk (talk) 11:27, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't work in my browser
I'm currently viewing this article with K-meleon, which includes a pretty up-to-date version of the "Gecko" engine used by Firefox, and therefore ought to be able to handle Unicode OK. Philcha (talk) 12:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Web browsers don't always come configured to render Unicode correctly. Have you looked into the rendering options of K-meleon? Luis Dantas (talk) 12:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No, but then how many Wikipedia readers are aware of such technical details (I'm not, and I've worked with computers for decades!). That suggests either this article needs revision to ensure it works with common browsers "out of the box" or we need another one that works with common browsers "out of the box" so that we can link to it in other relevant articles (see Talk:Chess). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Philcha (talk • contribs) 01:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well I also just viewed the article with K-meleon (version 1.1.2, on Windows XP) and had no problems with the characters. I don't think I've changed much settings in K-meleon, though I may have added extra Unicode fonts in Windows, I'm not sure. Vadmium (talk) 09:45, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Of course! Half of me feels ashamed for not thinking of that (the other half thinks "On Wikipedia I'm in user mode, not tech mode"). I've edited the article to point out the need to download an appropriate character set, with a ref. Thanks! Philcha (talk) 12:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Queries
What about fairy chess pieces in unicode?176.250.146.99 (talk) 12:17, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Alas, no. There is not even a real consensus for what to call them, much less what to represent them by. Without a graphical representation, they can't go in Unicode, which doesn't encode abstract characters with meanings but no fixed representations. So, no, not even the princess (B+N), empress (R+N), and amazon (Q+N) that just about everyone would have invented independently. Double sharp (talk) 15:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)


 * There is a proposal at https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17034r3-n4784r-fairy-chess.pdf Daira Hopwood ⚥ (talk) 04:49, 2 January 2018 (UTC)


 * They have been added in the Chess Symbols block with Unicode 12.0, released March 5, 2019. Nellisks (talk) 13:44, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

History
Looking at the Unicode encoding, I see that the white pieces have consecutive numbers, but the black pieces all have the same number with a letter suffix. This suggests to me that the white pieces were an earlier, perhaps original part of the unicode and that black symbols were an afterthought. That does make some sense: if you want to transcribe a chess match using algebraic notation, you don't need to distinguish colour, because the first move of each pair is always white. In fact, I'm not sure what the black symbols are necessary for, though they are obviously cool. So just wondering: if anyone knows the history of this - when this came in the development of unicode, or even who motivated it - it would be an interesting two-sentence appendix. --Doric Loon (talk) 22:58, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Um. A comes after 9. These are hexadecimal numbers. Double sharp (talk) 15:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Non-piece information
Anyone know of any effort to document the state information that is not directly a piece? For example, one board where the last move allow en-passant, vs one that is exactly the same piece placement, but the move order do not allow en-passant now. Most engines document that graphically in one way or another (highlight last move, arrows, etc).

or maybe even state that no engine UI bothers to show today, such as castleling opportunity being spent or not.

Empty squares
Isn't it, like, silly to use graphical table to render board this in a graphical environment? What it is purspose then? Alliumnsk (talk) 11:25, 25 March 2020 (UTC)