anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker) (05/30/91)
My Chess fonts have cropped up in some surprising places recently. More on that later. Meanwhile, here is a typo-fix for a problem with the font I posted in March [re-posted without my knowledge with gnuchess 3.1]: On line 317, the "Tofig" at the end should be "tofig". This makes white pawns fit properly in their halos. The difference is only noticeable at large magnifications or when printing neutral pawns. The cognate line 319 (for black pawns) is correct. Also, some users feel that the pieces are too large in relation to the squares. If this bothers you, change the scale factors on lines 188 and 192 from "0.95" to whatever you choose. Fastidious PostScripters will also change the "UniqueID" on line 29. Users of the font with "postprint" from the latest Gnu chess package from "comp.sources.misc" should note that that program makes almost pessimal use of the font. The font is optimised for occasional diagrams set in a text comprising mostly text and figurines; as most pieces are not cached, it is painfully slow for pages that consist mostly of diagrams. Caching the pieces would be a major exercise which I don't have the spare time to undertake "for free", and it would almost certainly make the font significantly slower for its intended application. Technically, my font should *not* have been packaged up with Gnu chess. It is neither "copylefted", nor public domain [though the restrictions are pretty minimal], and the copyright notice has not been complied with in the Gnu distribution [my "README" has not been included, and additions to the file have not been clearly marked]. In the circumstances, with the cat well and truly out of the bag, and given my own personal desire to see useful software freely available, I hereby (belatedly) sanction the (ab)use of my font in the current distribution [only] of gnuchess version 3.1. A more serious ripoff has also come to my attention recently. A correspondent sent me a file with some diagrams in it. Lo and behold, the pieces looked somewhat familiar! On close inspection, they were pretty scrotty bit-mapped versions of the pieces from an old version of my font. He had obtained them as part of a commercial package. This was a blatant breach of the copyright on the old font, which did not allow commercial use without my permission. So, if anyone tries to sell you a chess font in which the white knights look as though they have their jaws locked tightly round a large apple, and the rooks are too wide and heavily drawn, please (a) ask for your money back; (b) send me a share of any refund [:-)]; and (c) suggest that they upgrade to the more recent version, which both looks better and is cleared for commercial use. -- Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK. anw@maths.nott.ac.uk