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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

I'd assume you'd just use the unicode chess symbols, nowadays? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_symbols_in_Unicode)

I'd also assume people would use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_notation_(chess) for the notation. No need to say "e2 e4" if "e4" is already non-ambiguous. Plus side for learning this notation is it can help read old games.

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There was some trouble in scaling unicode text within the layout. Unfortunately increasing `font-size` is not trivial within the context of terminal. There are some ways around this , but i figured out that it's far more easier to render chess pieces as pixel images using `rich-pixels` [1]

[1] https://github.com/darrenburns/rich-pixels

That makes a ton of sense. Kudos on tackling a lot of issues in making this!

I think the unicode chess symbols are not quite in the spirit of terminal applications. It is also more intuitive to move the rook using algebraic notation, if the rook is denoted by r, rather than "♜". But certainly, viewing the board using unicode symbols is a very reasonable user setting, but I would err that it would not be default.

And "e2 e4" contains technically superflous information, yes. The application should be able to parse the most minimal algebraic notation possible, but also more verbose commands.

Totally fair. It also reminded me that emacs has a chess package. Because of course it does. :D

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