Palview and Chess Symbols

This section of the help deals with a few options that allow webmasters to create an html/javascript page enriched with symbols and figurines from a number of ChessBase TTF fonts. These fonts are included with many very fine ChessBase products, including Fritz5.32, Fritz6, HIARCS7.32, Junior5 and others.

In order for any visitor to your site to view the enriched html pages, they must have an installed copy of the font you choose to use in your page. Anyone viewing these special pages who do not have the font installed will see gibberish for all the special symbols used.

So why did we include support for these ChessBase enriched pages?

Our intention here was to provide a greater level of support for those visitors to your site that own one of the many fine ChessBase poducts. These 'special' visitors make up a large number of the browsing chess public.
We expect, and highly recommend, that if you choose to create ChessBase enriched html files, that these files will not be the first page that visitors see when they come to your site. Rather, you would first create a page that does not use ChessBase enrichment, and then place a link in this first page to your enriched page and invite ChessBase users to visit this second page.
This means that you will need to create two copies of each page. The first without enrichment, the second with. Then link from the first page to the second. Depending upon how much free editing you do on the initial page created by the program, this may involve very little work or quite a bit of work.
There are three options that deal with ChessBase enriched html files:

symbolmethod = font/text
symbolfont = cbaries/cbletter/cbtime
figurines = on/off

The first thing that you must do is set the option symbolmethod = font. This tells the program to use a ChessBase font for all game commentary and moves. Next, you choose the font itself with the second option, symbolfont. The three symbol fonts are shown along with their actual font name:

cbaries FigurineCB AriesSP
cbletter FigurineCB LetterSP
cbtime FigurineCB TimeSP

It is improtant to remember that the use of any symbolfont is only enabled by setting symbolmethod = font, otherwise the symbolfont is ignored as well as the figurines setting.
When figurines are used the program will use figurines for each piece letter (P..K) in each move. The program will also scan each PGN comment for moves and convert them to figurines as well. Inside PGN comments you can also use a backslash before each of the PGN piece letters as in \P \N \B \R \Q \K and the program will convert the piece letter to its corresponding figurine. (If symbolmethod = text, each of these explicit figurines are converted to just P..K.) These explicit figurines are often used as shorthand for such statements as:

{And White went on to win the \K + \N +2\P vs \K + \B + \P ending.}
or as in
{Now Black's \K comes under direct attack since his \Q has been deflected to the \Q-side.}

The next point for discussion is Palview's handling of chess symbols. There are two methods for entering chess symbols using Palview. First, the program recognizes the most commonly used PGN NAGs (Numeric Annotation Glyph) as well as the common PGN symbols ! ? !! ?? !? ?!. NAGs can appear after a move and are represented by a dollar sign '$' followed by a number from 0 to 255.
Palview also recognizes the set of NAGs exported to PGN by ChessBase (See the tables below.) Note that ChessBase Light does not export all PGN NAGs.
The second method of entering symbols uses a set of CSMs or Chess Symbol Mnemonics. CSMs use a set of commonly used short hands for chess symbols that cannot be represented using a regular text font. For example, it is a common practise to use +/= to represent the symbol '+' over a '=', or 'White has a slight advantage'. (See the tables below for the complete set of CSMs that Palview recognizes.)
Any of the CSMs that Palview recognizes can be used inside PGN comments and the program will scan for them and convert them to the actual symbol they represent using the choosen symbolfont.
Once again, we encourage you to only use these special features to create a second copy of a regular page and to link to this second page from the first. If you use these special symbol fonts in a first page, you will get a lot of mail from viewers complaining about problems.