Chess Diagrams (Version 12, 10 Jan 2009)
Setup a position
Test Legal
Save Diagram as BMP File
Save Diagram to Virtual Clipboard
Save HTM
Retrieve a saved position
Preferences
Colors
Flip Board
Start Position, Empty Board, Typical Position
Setup a position
Click the Empty Board button. Click a piece at left to select it.
When the mouse is brought inside the board the cursor shows the piece selected.
Click a square to place a piece on it.
To empty a square, either
click the same piece again on that square or use the empty square from the left.
The dot and cross symbols
can be used to mark squares (e.g. for teaching chess).
To draw an arrow: Click
the Arrow button (the mouse cursor changes to an iron cross when brought inside
the board area), click the starting square and then the ending square. Only
arrows corresponding to chess moves are possible.
To erase an arrow, simply
draw the same arrow again.
Test Legal
Whenever you save a position (as BMP, virtual clipboard or HTM)
ChessDiagrams performs a simple test to see if the position is legal.
You can also test a position before saving it, by clicking "Check Legal". When Check Legal shows
errors/warnings, click "More" to see the details. The file is saved irrespective of errors and warnings.
So, it is possible for you to construct diagrams that are not legal positions e.g. for instructional purposes.
Warnings indicate unlikely though legal positions. The purpose is to draw your attention to possible
mistakes.
Save Diagram as BMP File
Click File --> Save BMP or Ctl+S. A file browser shows up.
Negotiate to a folder of your choice. Enter the name of a new file
(don't type .bmp, the file type bmp is taken automatically)
or click an existing file to overwrite it.
BMP files can be inserted into WORD documents (In WORD click
Insert --> Picture --> From File). You could select your
picture size in advance (see Preferences). In any
case you can also resize the picture inside WORD without loss of picture
quality.
Save Diagram to Virtual Clipboard
The process of preparing
a WORD document with many diagrams can be tedious. You could create all the
diagrams in advance, then open the word document and paste the files one at a
time. To shorten this process, ChessDiagrams
introduces (from version 10) a virtual clipboard. The virtual clipboard is not
the Windows clipboard, it is simply a file
C:\clip.bmp. The first time you use the virtual clipboard you will see a
message which you should disable for future. Afterwards, simply Ctl+L will save to the virtual
clipboard file, silently overwriting it.
After you have your first picture ready in C:\clip.bmp you need to construct a
macro in WORD (with a keyboard shortcut or toolbar) to insert C:\clip.bmp into your
documents. When you have done
that and made it available for all documents, it becomes very simple to paste diagrams
keeping ChessDiagrams open while working with Word.
If you are unfamiliar with defining a macro in WORD, get Help inside WORD.
Basically you need to go: Tools --> Macro --> Record New Macro.
Save HTM
Click File --> Save HTM or Ctl+T, negotiate to a folder of
your choice, type a file name in the File Name box (don't type .htm, the file type htm is taken
automatically) or click an existing htm file to overwrite it. The saved htm file is a demo web page.
If you double click this file
it will open with your web browser and you will see the saved diagram. In order
to use this diagram on your own web page, open your own htm file as well as the htm file
you saved in a simple text editor like Notepad. Mark the table part of
your saved file (from <TABLE CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0> to </TABLE>) and copy-paste into the relevant place
inside your own htm file. (I assume you have a basic
knowledge of html). While uploading the webpage to your server, you will also
need to upload the gifs directory (included in ChessDiagrams).
Note that the Preferences “Picture Size”
and “Show Coordinates” apply for the htm
file too (however the Custom size cannot be used).
Retrieve a saved position
Whenever you save a BMP
or HTM file (or a virtual clipboard file), a file with the same name but file type cdg
is saved in the same folder. The operation File --> Open CDG (Ctl+O) allows you to open the
diagram again in ChessDiagrams so that you can change
it.
Preferences
There are 4 choices for picture size:
| Name |
Size (inches) |
Remarks |
| CUSTOM |
Selectable: 1" to 6" |
Option n/a for HTM |
| SMALL |
2" |
|
| MEDIUM |
4" |
|
|
LARGE
|
6" |
|
You can also decide if you want the coordinates (a-h, 1-8) along the board
edge, or even have ChessDiagrams ask you about this every
time. The Preferences you set are automatically saved and used every time you
start ChessDiagrams.
Colors
When you click on this,
the colours in the display change. This does not have any effect on the BMP
files you create (they are Black and White) however the chosen colour applies
to HTM files.
Flip Board
Click this, to turn the
board around.
Start Position, Empty Board, Typical Position
No explanation needed for these.