@packbat what is this anyway? what's it about?

@Alyx the current goal is to be able to set up a chessboard, move pieces around on it, and then copy out a block of HTML that renders the current position for use elsewhere

so, for example, if I wanted to make a Twine game where a game of chess took place, I could play through the game of chess with this and copy out whatever chess positions I need, instead of having to try to hand-code HTML tables

the eventual goal is for the game to actually know the rules of chess and also how to write down moves in algebraic notation

@packbat huh! interesting exercise. you know about PGN right?

@Alyx yep! full version will probably give the player:

- X-FEN for current position
- PGN for game as far as it has been played
- HTML for moves in the game so far plus current board position

(and possibly some fancy stuff with "moves since last saved board position" if I'm feeling ambitious)

(and branching trees of moves if I finish that and still feel ambitious)

@Alyx (I technically have a twine game idea that, because I am a Fool™, would involve 325 separate chess positions between all the different paths you could take between the five pages ... so the original inspiration for this was making a tool that would let me actually get that done.)

(I don't think I'm ever going to get that done.)

@packbat wow ok! sounds neat

@Alyx it was? like, the idea was that each of the five passages represented an era in my life spent playing chess, so the link to any given passage would be moves in a chess game, played so as to express something about how I approached the game in that part of my life

like, for example, if you start with passage 1, then I use a King's Indian system as an opening, because when I was a kid, I liked having a way to make several moves in a row at the beginning of the game without having to pay attention to what my opponent was doing

(I was really really bad at chess as a kid, so that kind of trick helped me keep playing)

...also, as long as I'm looking at my notes: apparently it's six passages. So ... 1956 different chess positions. That's too many chess positions.

@Alyx the problem is having the entire game be one game of chess, really

I could still do something interesting with each of the 6 branches being an opening and each of the other 5 offering a continuation, but stopping there and making the player start a new game with the next branch after that

then there'd be 36, which is pretty feasible

@packbat haha! we feel called out, cos we play stuff like the Nimzo-Larsen and reversed Indian games as White because they tend to let us put our pieces where we like, avoiding mixing it up early. though Reti said this was bad for novice players

@Alyx heh! well, I can't say I actually got competent until years later, so that might be true

might have been worth it just to help me not give up on the game, though