Customize Chess Pieces

[DayDrunkIn2DKnight]

Hello, I want to replace WinBoard default chess piece with the Alpha Chess Piece but I can't successfully do it. I tried to follow some of the threads here but I didn't find any luck because most of the posts are vague with their explanations. Any help in step by step order would be appreciated. Thanks

[H.G.Muller]

First you have to install the Alpha font on your system. Then you have to open the View -> Board Themes dialog, and tick the checkbox "Use piece font" there. From the install WinBoard would be pre-configured to use the Chess Mark font for pieces. You can change that in the same dialog, by typing the name of the Alpha font in the "Font name" entry, and the characters it should use for the various piece types in the "Font piece to char" entry (in the order white PNBRQK, black PNBRQK).

If you have no idea how piece glyphs are assigned to characters in the Alpha font, you can also go to the View -> Font dialog after ticking "Use piece font", and use the 'Choose' button to select the Alpha font, in a size that makes it easily visible in the preview of that dialog. (The size for rendering on theboard is automatically determined anyway). Then you can empirically determine the character assignment by starting to type the alphabet in the preview text entry, and erasing it again by backspace, until you get the white Pawn, then leave that and contiue typing until you get a white Knight, etc. When you have all pieces there in the required order you can OK the dialog.

The piece colors can then be set from the View -> Colors dialog.

[DayDrunkIn2DKnight]

The problem I had was that I didn't install the font. I went to View -> Board Themes.. -> Directory with Piece bitmap.

View -> Font -> Piece Font -> Choose
Worked for me.

Thank you for instruction.

To Simplify I am posting Screen Shots.

[H.G.Muller]

Thanks for the nice screen shots!

The piece directory is what you would need if you had the pieces as .bmp files. But that is a bit of a pain, because bitmaps are not sizable, and you would need a separate set of pieces for each square size. The fonts can be rendered at any size.

It is a pity, though, that there is no standardization in Chess fonts for how piece glyphs are assigned to characters. So that you have to figure that out for yourself every time you get another font.