#70 Russian comments problem into board-generator tool

[Anonymous]

Originally created by: Kantari...@gmail.com

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.Into Board-generator tool(...pgn4web/board-generator.html) I fill "chess games notation in PGN format" form with PGN notation and put there Russian language comments.
(for example: [Event...] ... 1. d4 d5 {comments коментарии}...) 2.c4...)

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Problem is next: when I press "generate HTML code and update preview" button script generate iframe code. But in this code Russian comments are replaced with "*" sign :S
You can see that problem in attached files.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
pgn4web 2.05

Please provide any additional information below.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Kantari...@gmail.com

(No comment was entered for this change.)

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: paolocas...@gmail.com

Thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately, this is not a bug but a result of architecture of the board-generator tool. In fact, this is mentioned in the board-generator wiki page: "Please also note that the board generator tool rejects characters outside the 255 characters ascii set, replacing those (such as special unicode characters) with stars *. This might affect some non English text and names."
See https://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/BoardWidget_generator

This is due to the fact that the board-generator tool encodes the PGN game into the board widget URL string; in order to do that the PGN game needs to be encoded in an efficient way because of a technical limitation on the URL string length. In order to achieve efficient encoding, only the 255 ascii characters are allowed, while Russian characters (as many other international characters) are outside that set. Any char outside the ascii 255 chars is replaced with a placeholder "*" char.

If comments in Russian are really important to you, you should not use the board generator tool and write your own HTML pages (remember to save your PGN files with Russian characters as a text file in unicode format).

Status: WontFix

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: paolocas...@gmail.com

to Kantaria.M:

I have something to test that would make life easier with non-English characters if certain conditions are met. If you are interested in helping on this, please drop me an email at pgn4web(at)casaschi.net

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: paolocas...@gmail.com

As of version 2.13 of pgn4web, the board generator supports an (undocumented) mode that could display any character (also beyond the ascii 255 characters set). This mode however only works if the pgn4web board widget is installed on the same server as the pages that will contain the code produced by the board generator.

Let's assume that the board.html is accessible from this URL:
http://www.yoursite.com/pgn4web/board.html

Then the board generator special mode is activated loading the board generator from this URL:
http://www.yoursite.com/pgn4web/board-generator.html?ep=f&bu=/pgn4web/board.html&ut=t

This will generate the HTML code for your page in a different format (using a textarea HTML tag) that would allow display of non ascii 255 characters. Incidentally, this setup also remove the limitation on the length of the PGN data.
Keep in mind, the generated HTML code will work only if used on a page on the same http://www.yoursite.com server.

PS: the options triggered by the ep, bu and ut switches are not configurable in the baord generator form, unless the eo=t option is set.

This functionality is above and beyond the intended scope of the board generator and should be considered as undocumented (beside this note) and unsupported.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: paolocas...@gmail.com

More on the workaround suggested at comment 4:

this setup also remove the limitation on the length of the PGN data, however, under some circumstances the "apply template" feature might not work properly. If you have any issue with using the "apply template" feature, please try using short PGN data (no more than a couple of short games without comments) to fine tune the look and feel of your board; only once happy with the overall layout, enter your full PGN data and generate the final chessboard.

The "apply template" feature uses a technique that might break with long PGN data.