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Topic: Revamping the notation converter? (Read 2985 times) |
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leo
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Revamping the notation converter?
« on: May 14th, 2010, 2:03pm » |
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Hi guys, long time no see. Congratz to this year's champion, I seem to sense a pattern of alternation along the years 
I'm going to move to a new web domain, and I thought I'd shake the dust off my old notation converter (EDIT: removed the old URL link), making it in javascript so it can run offline as well, and maybe add new features.
So, do you guys use it and would you suggest improvements? Thanks!
EDIT (October): The converter is now hosted on the arimaa.com server: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/notconv/old/
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| « Last Edit: Oct 2nd, 2010, 10:35am by leo » |
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omar
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #1 on: May 15th, 2010, 6:39pm » |
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Nice to hear from you Leo. I've linked the notation converter on the Games page, but I don't know how much it is being used. The chat room you built is pretty heavily used
As a small suggestion for improvement, perhaps you can add the Arimaa setup notation as another way to input the position. For example: Ed2 Hg1 Ra4 eb6 rf4.
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #2 on: May 15th, 2010, 10:26pm » |
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Hi Omar!
The format which I labeled "PGN" is actually the setup notation.
I should rename it to "Setup" maybe, and the official position notation to "Diagram"?
So the chat system hasn't broken yet? With the advances of the browsers during the last two years it might be possible to improve the cross-compatibility of it.
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camelback
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #3 on: May 15th, 2010, 10:58pm » |
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Hi Leo,
I used that tool often when you first introduced. It is a great tool and is very useful when you develop Arimaa content.
Currently the tool requires a static final position notation, Instead it would be even better if we could paste the complete game PGN and get the final position or wiki format or image from the tool.
For example if Adanac (or somebody  ) wants to paste 18g of a game in wiki, he can copy the PGN until 18g and generate the required wiki format or image from the tool.
I used to have a perl script to generate the static position and then use it in your tool to generate the required format.
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #4 on: May 16th, 2010, 12:09am » |
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Hi camelback,
Maybe we could make the converter an addon to the "Plan Game" tool on the arimaa web site, which has already all the game mechanics coded in?
I wouldn't mind coding the game logic in javascript (I've already done it a number of times in other languages) but I have the feeling it would just end up replicating the functionalities of the Plan game tool.
I'm working on a compact URL notation (takes between 1 and 33 chars) to pass a position parameter to the converter so it can be called from the Plan game window or any other place.
I don't know which solution is best. But the forum sure will make the magic one appear
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omar
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #5 on: May 16th, 2010, 5:32am » |
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on May 15th, 2010, 10:26pm, leo wrote:
The format which I labeled "PGN" is actually the setup notation.
I should rename it to "Setup" maybe, and the official position notation to "Diagram"?
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Oh OK, I missed that. Very nice.
I had setup a black and white image generator for Karl to help with producing the images used in his book.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/fig/
Maybe this should be merged with your tool. I can send you the code and images used for this, if you want.
If you convert your tool to JavaScript would it be able to generate the JPEG images in JavaScript or would that still be done on the backend?
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #6 on: May 16th, 2010, 7:48am » |
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The merger looks like a good idea!
I think I'll have to keep the server side php script for picture generation, unless people are ready to use SVG?
Ideally the interface would offer the choice of raster vs vector, but only the vector would work offline.
Even better, the vector image could be made interactive and used to position the pieces.
Sleepless nights ahead... 
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #7 on: May 24th, 2010, 9:27am » |
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I'm slowly working on the js version. Meanwhile I'd like to share my thoughts about a compact human-readable (with some training) notation for passing as an argument in a URL.
Here are the (tentative) codes for the squares:
Code:
8 abcdefgh
7 ijklmnop
6 qrstuvwx
5 yz56789-
4 YZ01234+
3 QRSTUVWX
2 IJKLMNOP
1 ABCDEFGH
abcdefgh |
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The piece positions would be written in this order
Code:| EMHHDDCCRRRRRRRR/emhhddccrrrrrrrr |
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A missing piece would be written ".", two missing pieces, ":".
Trailing missing rabbits would not be noted.
There are ways to make it even more compact but it wouldn't be human readable anymore.
Thoughts? Maybe this has already been done and I missed it.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #8 on: May 24th, 2010, 3:56pm » |
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on May 24th, 2010, 9:27am, leo wrote:| There are ways to make it even more compact but it wouldn't be human readable anymore. |
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Your suggestion doesn't seem all that human-readable as it stands. Using a single letter for each square would require a lookup table; no one could tell you whether '3' was next to 'W' or not. The algebraic coordinates 'f4' and 'g3' are far easier to visualize without a cheat sheet or translator at hand, although they are of course twice as verbose as using single characters per square.
My suggestion for position notation is a straightforward port of FEN (Forsyth-Edwards Notation) from chess. For example, in the video script, I suggested that the position 8/8/8/2R5/2e2m2/1ErD2C1/2D2Mh1/8 be used to illustrate winning by elimination. I didn't even explain how the notation works, but I'll bet the majority of Arimaa players could guess what position I intended to indicate. If you don't even have to explain it, then it's human-readable! I believe the position would be rendered as RN:KTW.5/03O.::S under your suggestion, i.e. using half as many characters as FEN, so obviously FEN isn't optimally compact, but that's not what you were asking for, right? 
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| « Last Edit: May 24th, 2010, 4:08pm by Fritzlein » |
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #9 on: May 26th, 2010, 8:29am » |
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Thanks Karl, you convinced me I should forget about human readability, so I can use the more compressed version for URL query with no remorse. It's only meant to provide short URLs, users shouldn't need to write or edit it by hand, it will be automatically generated for each position explored on the web app.
That esoteric version prefixes a character that encodes how many pieces of each type (except rabbits) are present.
PS: The query encoding for my old board image generator is actually a FEN variant
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| « Last Edit: May 26th, 2010, 8:32am by leo » |
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rbarreira
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #10 on: Aug 12th, 2010, 3:40pm » |
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The link seems to be down, actually you seem to have lost the domain?
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #11 on: Aug 15th, 2010, 3:35pm » |
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@rbarreira: Yes, the domain that I said I was moving to will hopefully remain mine for long. But my former hosting company extended my old domain to put ads on it. I planned to have the new converter finished when the old domain expires but I didn't make it in time. I'm not even in time for the new chat room, argh. If necessary, I can upload the old converter in a temporary folder of my new domain.
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rbarreira
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #12 on: Sep 20th, 2010, 5:18am » |
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Yes it would be nice to have it!
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leo
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #13 on: Sep 28th, 2010, 2:56am » |
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Sorry for being so slow  The old converter will be hosted on the arimaa.com server so that people can safely hotlink to the generated board pictures; Omar or I will post a notice here when it's done.
I'm thinking of integrating the new converter to the game viewer/explorer which Clojure is currently developing, and I'm still eager for suggestions for improvement and new features for the converter, as well as ideas for how to integrate it smoothly into the viewer.
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clojure
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Re: Revamping the notation converter?
« Reply #14 on: Sep 28th, 2010, 6:41am » |
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Yo Leo, nice to see you on the board again.
I actually am not sure what kind of converter this is, text to image (something beyond that, less?)? Let me hear implementation details, and let's figure out how to use it as part of the viewer.
In what language is it written in? Does it use some library to generate the image file that is not easily having replaced in other environment?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 28th, 2010, 6:42am by clojure » |
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