- CSS support can now be invoked by specifying the stylesheet name in the ini file as follows:
stylesheet = "palstyle.css"
This file should reside in the same directory as the html files.
Public Health Warning: The help that follows limits itself to describing Palviews use of CSS.
If you are unsure about how to use Cascading Style Sheets then you must consult standard documentation. I'm afraid we can't cope with explaining CSS.
Palview currently supports five classes.
| pplay | players name |
| pevent | event |
| panno | annotator |
| pm | moves |
| pc | text |
| popen | opening |
| pv | notes |
| pf | symbols |
| pelo | elo |
| peco | eco |
| ptitle | title |
An example CSS file is supplied with the release. It contains definitions for all the classes
currently used by Palview. We recommend you use it as a base for generating your own personalised versions.
Please see the example files for details of the exact html syntax generated.
You can add any number of other classes to your own particular CSS
file, but only the above will actually be used by palview.
The style sheet should be in the same folder as the HTML file that uses it.
There is an additional special class called Fig.
Use of this class causes all the moves in comments to be rendered with a figurine font.
Those who do not have the font installed will just see the regular letters.
If you are using stylesheets then you can also specify:
Ini option:
gameinfomode = 0 or 1 (default 0)
gameinfomode=0 is the standard presentation.
gameinfomode=1 inserts the various pgn header tags into their own table.
It also uses CSS classes for each of the various
Tags which allows more control over their presentation.
-
Support has been added for Loïc Magnin's windows interface to Palview, WinPal.
Help for this interface is included with that program so it is not covered here.
If you hand edit the ini files though you will notice that they may now have two sections;
[palview]
... pal2's commands go here ...
[cfgpal]
... cfgpal commands go here ...
The order is not important.
-
The program will now SPAN the figurines if you are using a stylesheet and have set:
figurines = on
This will tell the program to replace all piece letters (P..K) in commentary with
SPANed figurines.
While we are on the topic of figurines and CSS, here is a list of the
languages supported by the Alpine fonts, which are the main fonts
used for figurines in our CSS.
There are actually two different figurine fonts for different languages.
The first font, LinaresFigurine (or HastingsFigurine, ZurichFigurine), supports languages
marked F. The other font, LinaresFigurineAlternate (or Hastings..., Zurich...) supports
languages marked with A. Other languages are not supported.
Czech P J S V D K
F Danish B S L T D K
F Dutch O P L T D K
F English P N B R Q K
Estonian P R O V L K
Finnish P R L T D K
A French P C F T D R
F German B S L T D K
A Hungarian G H F B V K
Icelandic P R B H D K
A Italian P C A T D R
F Norwegian B S L T D K
Polish P S G W H K
Portuguese P C B T D R
Romanian P C N T D R
A Spanish P C A T D R
F Swedish B S L T D K
So what doese this mean? Well, if you use Danish letters (hi there Eric) as in:
pcletters = "BSLTDK"
Then anyone with the xxxFigurine font will be able to see the figurine
when they visit your page even though the program will change all piece letters to use
"BSLTDK".
On the other hand, for any language marked 'A' you will need to edit the CSS to
change the xxxFigurine font name to xxxFigurineAlternate in order to ensure
that anyone visiting the site with the font will be able to 'see' the figurines.
Both of these fonts, plus a great many variations, are all supplied with each font
style that you choose from Alpine. The Linares package comes with 17 TTF fonts,
some of which are specific for use with Chess Assistant and ChessBase products.
They are easily worth the money.
- Select the type of html formatting to use.
(better known as the Frames option)
This option causes the board to be put in one frame and the pgn in another.
This solves two irritating problems with version one.
In version one if you scrolled the page the board disappeared from view. If you use the frames option this no longer happens,
board remains in view in the left hand frame while the text scrolls in the right hand frame.
Another problem in version one that many people reported was that if you had a database then only the text of the first game was displayed.
With the frames option selecting a game in the drop down list will cause the text for that game to be loaded into the right hand window.
htmltype = normal
or
htmltype = frames
or
htmltype = layers
'normal' generates a single page as with version one.
'frames' option generates a framed window with the board in the left frame and the game and all commentary in the right hand frame.
'layers' this option is reserved, do not use.
When the option is invoked the program creates three HTML files:
For example with a pgn file called zurich53.PGN the following files will be generated.
zurich53.htm -- original name of PGN is the controlling html file
zurich5b.htm -- the board
zurich5g.htm -- the game
This option can also be used in database mode and the program now shows all the moves of all the games. The moves can also be 'linked' to the board.
If you select htmltype = frames and the PGN file contains more than a single game the program automatically sets database mode on and
displaymode to 0.
- Convert multiple pgn files with one command
It is now possible to convert multiple pgn files with a single command. Previousely this did not work correctly.
A sample batch file is included in the distribution.
The command is as follows.
for %%f in (*.pgn) do palview %%f -x
The *.pgn will convert all pgn file in the current directory. You may of course filter which pgn's are selected. f*.pgn for instance will select only those begining with the letter 'f'. For other combinations please consult standard dos documentation.
The command can also be run directly from dos. in this case you should replace the double %% by single % as so:
for %f in (*.pgn) do palview %f -x
note that it is the '-x' switch which tells palview not to display the standard dos window. If you ommit it you will have to confirm each file generation.
- Database selection box information
It is now possible to specify the level of information to be included in the database selection box.
dbtags = eco, result
The players names are always printed.
You can now choose to add the ECO and the Result as well.
To add both, just list them together as in the above example (case is not important).
- Additional board/piece sizes
19 and 35 pixel sets are now supported and included with the release for all fonts originaly
supplied with the program except Tilburg which did not render well at 19 pixels.
- Use of the numeric key pad.
This function allows you to use the numeric keypad instead/as well as the control panel under the board to control the display of the game
usekeystrokes = on / off
The keys that are used are:
Numeric Keypad
--------------
4 (<-) Back 1 move
6 (->) Forward 1 move
7 (Home) Start of Game
1 (End) End of Game
8 Previous Game in List (if database used)
2 Next Game in List (if database used)
/ Flip Board (if used)
* Autoplay (if used)
This feature only works with a single game or with a database. In a multigame file we wouldn't know which game to 'play', so this feature is not available.
- Tooltips
You may now specify tooltips to the buttons of the control panel. These are small text comments that appear if you mouseover the controlpanel buttons.
They act as usefull reminders of the function of the buttons.
You can add a tooltip to any of the buttons simply by providing the text you want displayed for each button. Here is an example for each button using english:
constarttip = "Game start"
con5backtip = "5 back"
conbacktip = "1 back"
conforwardtip = "1 forward"
con5forwardtip = "5 forward"
conendtip = "Game end"
confliptip = "flip board"
conautotip = "Autoplay"
By default the program does *not* supply any tooltips.
- Symbol support using gifs
The program will now use GIFs for the Informant chess symbols.
The GIFs should be placed in your JPC folder or whatever folder you are using for your pieces.
The ini setting is:
symbolmethod = gif
The GIFs supplied were created for use with 12pt font settings at 800x600
- The maximum length allowed for player's names has been increased from 16 to 32 characters.
Beware: When using the database option this can cause the drop down list to become
unmanageable.
- Specify a table background color with the ini option
tablebgcolor = "colordefinition"
The colordefinition is inserted into the table bgcolor
definition so you can use a color name or an explicit color mask as in:
tablebgcolor = "red"
tablebgcolor = "#ffffff9"
- Overall table width (%) can now be specified using:
tablewidth = N
N can have any value from 75 to 100, which is a percentage figure. We can
allow shorter widths than 75% if we feel that it is a good idea, but for now 75%
looks like a reasonable lower figure.
Default is nothing
- The control panel name can now be specified using the ini option:
controlpanelname = "controlpanel.gif"
It is up to each webmaster to ensure that the control panel he uses has the
right number of buttons on it to match the number of requested services (i.e.
flip board & autoplay).
If no controlpanelname is provided, then the program will automatically
generate the code to use the appropriate 'conpanxx.jpg' provided with the
program.
The default control panel has been redesigned to give a cleaner look
- Preposition the board with black pieces at bottom
Self explanatory, specify in the pgn
[JsCom "flip=1"]
you can combine this with the startply option as follows:
[JsCom "startply=36:flip=1"]
This will position the game at ply 36 with black on the bottom.
-
Believe it or not the code has been optimised. Again.:-)