Caissus: He's blurry, all right! He snuck out of the yard last night and didn't come home until feeding time this morning. Bad boy! :)
Maybe it's those Dalmation spots on him that makes him look that way.

I think the previous icon is also a little bit blurred ?

Chessmaster1000: If we could pick the icons, then you could keep using it and I could switch. The best of both worlds, eh?

This is a good idea that the user picks the symbol.
For me the current Janus piece icon is very funny and whenever i look at it my feelings change positive!
So i like the piece......
I also find its smile smirking, like it makes fun of us playing the game......

But look the Janus piece again! Look it's smiling with so much silliness that it should make you laugh!! It's a damn of a piece for me!

Caissus: That's it Caissus. I think both look a lot better than what we have now. The Cardinal is exactly the piece itself. Do you think they'd be easy to tell apart from the Knights on the same board? If so, are there others that feel as I do about the doglike thing and can we get fencer to change the symbol? If it's just me, it probably not worth the trouble. Or maybe it can be made so that the user picks the style of symbol on his page as he does with the rest of the Chess board set up?

http://caissus.gmxhome.de/WJanus.jpg
http://caissus.gmxhome.de/BJanus.jpg
http://caissus.gmxhome.de/bcardinal.jpg
http://caissus.gmxhome.de/wcardinal.jpg

I am wondering if we could have it changed to either look like the Archbishop on Gothic Chess or Sumerian's double sword icon on his site? The strange smirking doglike figure just doesn't jibe with how I think of the piece. If those icons aren't acceptable, how about a horse's head with a bishop's mitre on it. Kind of like how that Janus Chess site of Caissus has the piece for the set itself. Or how does Grand Chess represent the Cardinal in that game. Perhaps someone with a Grand Chess set could photograph the piece on profile and we could use it for the icon. Maybe someone could come up with a good icon? Who made the one we have now? Who, who, let the dogs out? :)

Okay, thanks.

Who is that Golden horseman ? A chess player.

King August II The Strong (German August II der Starke, Polish August II Mocny) (May 12, 1670 - February 1, 1733) was an influential Saxon nobleman and monarch. He held the titles Elector of Saxony and King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Born in Dresden, Saxony, August was the son of John George III Wettin who was born in 1647 to the house of Wettin. He was the Elector of Saxony, one of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire. His tropps defeated the Turks at Vienna which marked the end of their invasion in Europe.

August´s mother was Anne Sophie of Denmark. In 1694, he became Elector of Saxony as Prince-Elector Friedrich August I. von Sachsen. Following the death of the Polish king John III Sobieski, August was converted to Catholicism and elected king of Poland in 1697 with the help and support of Russia and Austria. The legality of the election was questioned by some Poles.

As a result of defeats in the war with Sweden and the pro-Swedish party in Poland, August had to abdicate in 1706 in favour of Stanis³aw Leszczyñski. But after the Swedish defeat in the Battle of Poltava, he was reintroduced as King of Poland in 1709. One of his sons, Friedrich August II. followed him first as Elector of Saxony , then as August III of Poland, King of Poland.

August II was called August the Strong for his bearlike strength and also for his numerous offspring. It is sometimes written that he sired 365 children. Although this figure would be extremely difficult to verify, August II did father a very large number of illegitimate children, the most famous of whom was Maurice de Saxe (with Aurora von Königsmarck), the brilliant French military commander.

He successfully set out to discover the secret of the "White Gold", as the porcelain he produced in Dresden and Meissen was called. He also gathered many of the best architects and painters from all over Europe in Dresden, and his rule marks the beginning of Dresden's development as a leading centre of technology and art. August's body was buried in Poland --all but his heart, which is in Dresden castle.

ughaibu: I unbanned you right after becoming moderator back in August, wasn't it? I remember sending you a message saying so. You replied that you weren't going to use this board any more, but did thank me for unbanning you.
Hi, and welcome back.

ughaibu: I see you. ;-)

Am I still hidden here?

Sumerian: thanks sumerian! i added the two links!

to schachmdmt:
Link to ChessV: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv/
Link to TSCPGothic: http://www.xs4all.nl/~mlngveld/gothicchess/index.html
a beta link to Smirf: http://www.chessbox.de/beta.html

At my website http://www.gothicchess.at/ you can find a list with links related to gothic chess! plese let me know if you know more, either with a message here or per mail: info@gothicchess.at !

Walter Montego: I think the most important informations,you can also find here or at chessvariants.com

Caissus: That's too bad, as I can't read German. Oh well. I like Janus Chess, though I'm still having problems playing it better. The game is harder than it looks. Them sneaky Januses. :)

Walter Montego: No Walter, it is in German only.

Caissus: Does the Janus Chess site have an English link?

Ol' fencer is thinking of merger this board with that one. The games are almost the same from a surface look anyway. They certainly play a lot differently than each other though. I suppose if you're just going to talk about Janus Chess without any connection to Gothic Chess you might as well take it to the Janus board. You are just talking about the sets and pieces themselves and it seems relevant to me.

you can look here : http://www.janusschach.de/
But the Januschessfederation is very inactive at the moment. The best is to look at chessvariants.com or ...here.At the moment I am collecting games on my page,please look at my profile.

gotti2000: I would suggest we switch to the Janusboard...

Caissus: Sorry, didn't know that. I'm rather new to all this chessvariants. Didn't even know that there are so many! Well, looks like I'm not the only one who mixed that up:
http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/janus.html
"The extra pieces of this game, the Januses, look like knights with some extra `pin' put on their head, making them look a little like unicorns."

Uwe, I would have a questions for you just to satisfy my own interest. Who came up with standards like this Janus-look? Is there somethink like a Janus Chess Federation in place? Can you link me to some 'History of Janus Chess'?

Thanks,

Gotti

gotti2000: No gotti ,that is the official "Janus" piece.
BTW it is only important, that you have two additional pieces for your piecesset. Then you can use them as Janus,AB,Chancellor,Wizard,for the Chinese Chess or whatever

Caissus: That's an Einhorn (unicorn)!
http://homepages.compuserve.de/uwdacoma/JanusMarsh1.jpg

CardinalFlight: in will change the pieces soon

It works great, but the pieces are kind of hard to tell apart. The archbishop and chancellor look most similar.

new there at gothicchess.at:
- chapter with games (intro)
- first games (for testing java tool)
(all in german)

Link "Eroeffnungen" Maybe you wanna have a look if this is okay on your screen.

to Nasmichael:

That choice could be relevant not only for Gothic Chess alone but for the whole family of Capablanca extended piece set related variants.

Indeed it seems neither being simple nor to be skipped finding appropriate icons DISTINCT to existing and RELATED to the GAITS of the represented pieces. The solution Smirf provides for that problem thus avoids the usage of horse heads or bishop hats. And for newcomers additionally to those pictures it might be helpful also to use new and better names, where some already have been introduced here:

A=ARCHANGEL (ger. E=Erzengel, protecting the paradise with swords) instead of Archbishop or Janus
C=CENTAUR (ger. Z=Zentaur, because of its double nature, horse part below) instead of Chancellor

Sumerian: The choice of symbols are great and easy to explain to new players when I show them the board to share the game. Well done.

If you need names for E and Z then
Erzengel and Zentaur sounds good to me. Erzengel because of the reasons given by Sumerian (defending the paradise's entry by his sword) and Zentaur because of the half-horse thingy! However I'm by far not the person to establish German standards for GC this should be done officially by the Austrian and German GothicChess Federation. So I'm just doing some brainstorming here.

Well, i read the discussion here and in other fellowshipfs and set up v0.2 of the rules of gothic chess (in german) at gothicchess.at - i added some pics too.
and please send me links about gothic chess related sites to info@gothicchess.at - i will add them in my link list!

to Dresden:
For Janus Chess there seems to be a notation using J for the Janus. But we are discussing the original Capablanca extended piece set, thus we should not use the name Janus. Traditionally the English names for the new pieces are 'A' for Archbishop and 'C' for Chancellor. Because already a lot of game notations do exist, it will not make any sense to change the English piece letters 'A' and 'C', which name ever might be related to that letter.

In German language we have that problem of taking a first letter for "Kanzler", like in English for the "Knight". Just like that problem has been solved by taking an unused letter N from the word Knight, it will help to take the unused letter Z from Kanzler, which overmore would not conflict with the international English letters. When looking at a bilingual GUI it should be no problem to decide which piece is addressed by a letter. Z for Kanzler would solve this request.

A distinct second problem is to find good names for those pieces corresponding to the already used letters (A+C English, E+Z German). But they should of course be highly related to those actually used.

C for Chancellor (German: Kanzler), A for Archbishop, German: kArdinal, Erzbischoff or jAnus.

to Caissus:
Look on the gait of the Archbishop. It will remind me on two crossed swords. Thus I selected that symbol being for me more related to that piece than anything with a bishop. Thus A = Archangel or in German E = Erzengel (defending the paradise's entry by his sword) would be no bad idea. Also see at my symbols: http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachveri1_e.html

The Auerswald-tool uses for the standard pieces the German abbreviations and for the AB the "A" for the chancellor the "C".Even so we can speak in German about "Kanzler" and "Kardinal".I don`t like the "Erzbischof".
Example: http://caissus.gmxhome.de/Partieen/caissusgothic.htm

to andreas:
Smirf's GUI is switchable from English to German. In German it is translating the move notation using 'Z' for Kanzler and 'E' for Erzbischof. Smirf is able to read even strange notations when proceeded by an appropriate FEN string, regardless whether they are written down in English or German. That ability would be affected when chosing a letter for the Kanzler which could be regarded as an English one meaning a different piece.

see: http://www.chessbox.de/_tmp/SmirfPrototyp.png

Sumerian: So, what notation are you currently using in Smirf, say when you need to save a game in German notation?

gotti2000: if you want to stick to tradition, pick any name but translations for "cardinal" and "archbishop". after all, in german, all the piece names (except king) are different from the english equivalents. the same goes for french, by the way.

I repeat a posting from another discussion board here:

Today Smirf is able to read even strange game notations in German and English because of its piece letters could be distinguished or are identical like K for King. Thus selecting A for Kanzler instead for Z would be a not so good selection conflicting with A for Archbishop. When viewing a game notation or a simple move notation that could lead to avoidable misunderstandings. Additionally letters C and Z are more related.

andreas: Nice idea but all existing German notations are derived off the first letter of the piece name. I'm not an expert in chess history to find the reason for this but I think we should comply in some way with the traditional system. At the moment this is not an issue as there are no official German Tournaments running and to be honest in traditional chess I'm more familiar with the English notation than the German anyway. Ideal would be piece names having 'A' and 'C' as their first letter I think. This would satisfy everyone I guess except professional translators of course :-)

Or Kardinal with the "C" (Cardinal) and for the chancellor the often used "Marschall" (Marshall) with the "M".

gotti2000: How about:
Chancellor -> "Kanzler" and use "Z" for notation;
Archbishop -> "Kardinal" and use "A" for notation.

schachmdmt: I was thinking over the translation again. It's not that easy to resolve. You are right that for some historical reason German notation takes its abbreviations off the first letter of the official german name of pieces where in English they don't by the way (eg. kNight). Literal translation doesn't seem the best approach to comply with the current piece naming. It's more a search for names which have a unique first letter (eg. Queen vs Dame [=Lady] instead of Königin [lit. translation]).
So 'Erzbischof' for Archbishop seems to be ok. But I can't find a proper translation for the Chancellor having using this thesis. Kanzler would violate with King. Präsident would be nice but having a President and a King at the same board doesn't look that good. There must be a better term. Probably our German colleagues could help us out here ...

Dresden: i took the basic text from the chess rules of wikipedia - and i started to change it and to add the gc rules. well, the text is not individual yet, there will be some corrections and i will add some pics (diagrams and so on)
and of course i will link to other gc related sites! please wait!

gotti2000: Yes, it must be Archbishop ... but in general i am not sure if i should translate these words. teh english words are looking "cooler", but anyway, i will add these translations of course. but in any case i would say, that the notation should be A and C.
in austria i only know you and me playing gc, and at the vienna university of technology some interested, but at the moment non playing. where are you from exactly? please mail me at president@gothicchess.at

yes, a bit Austrian or Vienna accent would be cool if this was possible some way on some phrases, but you must know yourself off course. You will be linked soon.

schachmdmt: Nice look. Viennse dialect would be cool though ;-) One spelling mistake I found was: 'Arcbishop' instead of Archbishop.
By the way does anybody know the correct translation of an Archbishop. Is it 'Erzbischof' or 'Kardinal'. I think different confessions have different definitions of those. Anyway, Chancellor would be 'Kanzler', no doubt.

Markus, do you know of any Austrians playing GC besides you and me?

Gotti

schachmdmt: I have seen the site. It is really gorgeous! I don't know any German, but the look seems beats this already ;) The overall structure looks quite sound. The growth of contents or the information should be very well mannered too.
Well done schachmdmt! All the best !

At gothicchess.at - section "Regeln" (rules) I wrote the first version of the rules for gothic chess, of course in german (gothicchess.at will be mainly a german speaking site).
in the next days i will add some pics there. german-speaking people here - please correct me if you see errors!
http://www.gothicchess.at/ started yesterday - so the rules are the first content in it (and some links)