Chess Diagrams

In the early days of AICCF, when Mr. V.D.Pandit was Editor of the AICCF Bulletin, I began to help him with chess diagrams. There was already a good selection of software available for free download. I chose CML (Chess Men Laser, by Dr. Timo Kallio) as the most suitable. What we needed was sharp black and white diagrams especially as the bulletin was being prepared on a daisy-wheel typewriter with the diagrams stuck at the required places.

From 1999, I began bringing out the Bulletin as an MS-Word file. I persisted with CML, inserting the graphic files directly into the Word document. The requirement for the diagrams had not changed; it was still to be high contrast black and white.

Over the years, CML disappeared from the web. I maintained my copy of the software and continued using it till May 2005. I supplied it to our regular contributors.

However, there was a need to replace this obsolete software for a couple of reasons. Firstly it was a DOS based program, belonging to a vintage era. Secondly it required the preparation of a text file as input showing the position of the pieces (as Rh1, Ke1 etc). A modern drag-and-drop interface was clearly needed as a time saving device. Several chess diagram publishing programs are to be found on the web, many of them free. Chess software products such as Chessbase and Fritz are capable of producing diagrams. However I did not find any of these programs suitable for use for the Bulletin. I did not like the shape of the pieces, and the diagrams would reproduce poorly in our low-resolution printing process. As with most software, you don’t get exactly what you want unless you program it yourself. So eventually, I prepared a program to meet our requirements.

The present issue is prepared using this new software (simply called diagram). The new program produces diagrams which look exactly the same as CML, so you won’t notice any difference when you read this bulletin. But they have been prepared much more conveniently, using a mouse interface. The program is a Win32 application that can be installed and run on Win XP or Windows ME/98/95.

For contributions to the bulletin please download and install this program (it is available at our website: wwww.geocities.com/aiccf/diagram/diagram.htm) and send me your articles with the diagrams embedded.