XABCDEFGHY
8r+-+-trk+(
7+-wq-+pzpp'
6p+l+p+-+&
5+psNnsn-+-%
4P+-+N+-+$
3+-zP-+-zP-#
2-zP-+LzPP+"
1tR-+QtR-mK-!
xabcdefghy
❍
A friend sent me a couple of these but I can't work out how to view them. I assume they're for Chessbase, but no idea really.
It's garbage. Search Google for the xabcdefghy string and you will see that it results from a computer trying to copy and paste from a PDF chess diagram.
Tell your friend to send you the PDF or at least a screenshot.
It's not garbage, just a text representation of a PDF diagram. Each character, or set of characters, denotes a piece, or beginning of line/end of line delimiter.
XABCDEFGHY-- Start of diagram
xabcdefghy -- end of diagram
The next lines are board ranks and numbered from the black side (rank 8, 7, 6 ....). Then end of line characters pair with the beginning line -- 8 and (, 7 and ", 6 and &, 5 and %, 4 and $, 3 and #, 2 and ", 1 and !
Lower-case letters for the piece are black pieces, upper-case are the white pieces. Light means the piece is on a light/white square and dark means on a dark/black square and the square color designation is lower-case on both white and black pieces.
r (R)== light square rook
tr (tR) == dark square rook
n (N) == light square knight
sn (sN) == dark square knight
l (L)== light square bishop
vl (vL) == dark square bishop
q (Q)== light squre queen
wq (wQ)== dark square queen
k (K) == light square king
mk (mK) == dark square king
p (P) == light square pawn
zp (zP) == dark square pawn
+- == empty square
I may be a little off; I used a PDF to text converter to dump a file and look at how it shows the diagrams but I think I got everything.
So the above is:
Wow. It's possible. More work than I think should be necessary.
Where does it say whose move it is?
Just grab/copy the whole thing, paste it into a word editor, and replace the font with a compatible one from the Chessbase Diagram family of fonts.
You may have to adjust the spacing of characters to make the diagram look OK.
Here is how it looks after processing on MS Word 2016:
It doesn't have a move since it is just a diagram meant to be part of a book/document. That information would be part of a header or part of the text, such as a given line ending in that position.
I also don't really think that was ever meant to be for human consumption exactly, just a text representation that the viewing program was meant to render as an image.
edit: There is likely a PostScript library out there that defines the conventions to use for building a chess board diagram without using actual images. I haven't found the source documentation, with basic searching, but it has to exist. I'm sure there are other codes for different piece types and flipped pieces as well.
edit2: though based on the post by @pfren, maybe it was set to allow people to type in a diagram into an editor with an appropriate font.
Thank you guys. Much appreciated.
FYI you don't have to install some Chessbase product anymore to get their fonts- not even the free Chessbase reader.
https://en.chessbase.com/support-kb/content/details/304/Font%20Problems
XABCDEFGHY
8r+-+-trk+(
7+-wq-+pzpp'
6p+l+p+-+&
5+psNnsn-+-%
4P+-+N+-+$
3+-zP-+-zP-#
2-zP-+LzPP+"
1tR-+QtR-mK-!
xabcdefghy
❍
A friend sent me a couple of these but I can't work out how to view them. I assume they're for Chessbase, but no idea really.