Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for chess notation

[Michael Everson]

On 3 Apr 2017, at 20:58, Asmus Freytag <asmusf at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> On 4/3/2017 12:33 PM, Richard Wordingham wrote:
>> If the variation selectors are ignored, these simplify to:
>> 
>> white square
>> hatched square
>> specific piece
>> 
>> This preserves all the information; the pattern of squares is known in advance and therefore redundant.
>> 
> This assumes that you always show the full board.

True, and see the two short examples at the top of page 5 of the proposal, and see the 12×12 board in Figure 5.

> Under that assumption, you are correct.
> 
> The variation selectors would then not needed, even, in the text: style markup could supply them in all cases where the data isn't raw text. 

What style markup? Nothing is defined; nothing is portable. If we use VS and put the burden on the font, we actually do the same thing that traditional lead-type setters did. 

> They would essentially only live in the data stream to the rendering engine, to force glyph selection, but not need to be part of the text.
> 
> Interesting,

Not entirely sure I follow, but… well, I like the proposal best because it is robust, easy to learn, and easy to use.

Michael Everson