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ChessBase Cafe Steve Lopez
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Fonts in Fritz In last month’s column, we showed you how to determine whether the Fritz11 chess fonts were properly installed, and how to install them if they were not. This month we’ll show you how to use the fonts in your Fritz software. The obvious main use for the chess fonts is to display the on-screen moves in Fritz’ Notation pane:
It’s a simple matter to select the proper font for the Notation pane. Just right-click anywhere in the pane to make a popup menu appear:
Click on “Choose Font” (as pictured above) to get a scrolling list of all the fonts on your computer:
Select one of the three fonts whose names begin with “Figurine”; you can preview your selection in the box to the right. The smaller box (with the arrow and number) allows you to select the display size of the font (how big the characters will appear on your screen) – the larger the number, the bigger the font. Click “OK” after you’ve made your selections. Note that you do not have to use figurines as part of the on-screen display; you may use letters if you prefer. We’ll look at how to switch back and forth between them later in this column. But if you want the chess evaluation symbols (such as a plus sign over an equals for “White is slightly ahead,” etc.) to appear properly on the screen, then you must use a Figurine font or else the evaluation symbols will appear as “nonsense” High ASCII characters. You’ll next want to make sure that a Figurine font is used in the Engine analysis pane (the pane in which the Fritz engine displays its ongoing analysis). Right-click in the Engine analysis pane to get a popup menu, then click on “Choose font” as you did for the Notation pane. You’ll again see the scrolling list of fonts, and you’ll also need to select a “Figurine” font. There’s a third screen element in which font choice is important, and its identity might surprise you. Right-click on the 2D main chessboard in Fritz, and select “Board design”:
Next click the arrow beside “Pieces” to display the options in the pull-down menu:
These choices are actually fonts. Fritz11 uses a font system for the display of pieces on its 2D chessboards. You may choose any style of font from this list (with a major caveat yet to come in a moment). The “Proportion” slider allows you to change the size of the pieces in relation to their squares; sliding to the left makes the pieces smaller while sliding to the right increases their size. The size of the squares will not change. The caveat I mentioned above is this: selecting one of the “Blind” options makes the pieces invisible. “What’s the point of this?” you might ask. Making the pieces invisible allows you to play Blindfold Chess; you simply click on a square to pick up a piece, move the mouse cursor to the destination square, and then release the mouse button to “drop” the piece. (By the way, this is another of those Fritz “FAQs”; namely, “Where did my pieces go?”) We have one final dialogue to discuss. Go to the Tools menu, select the Options command, and then click the “Clocks+Notation” tab at the top of the dialogue to get the following display:
This dialogue allows you to freely switch between using figurines and letters in your Notation pane display. Note that this does not affect the display’s evaluation symbols, only the display of the piece name abbreviations. This is an important toggle if you’re in the habit of using the Edit/Copy/Copy game command as a quick way to copy and paste chess games into another document (such as a .doc file or web page). If you’re cutting and pasting to a .doc file or other offline document and you’ve selected the figurine display, your piece name abbreviations will appear as High ASCII in your document until you apply a “Figurine” font to that block of text (see the documentation for your word processor/text editor for instructions on how to do this). If you switch to letters for your piece abbreviations before copying the game to the other document, the piece abbreviations will appear as letters instead. Note, though, that any evaluation symbols will appear as High ASCII regardless of whether you choose figurines or letters before copying the game. The only way around this is to apply a “Figurine” font to the block of text. If you selected a letter display before copying the game, the piece abbreviations will still appear as letters after applying the font. It’s best to use letter notation in an html (online) document and to write out your positional evaluations instead of using symbols. Even if you include proper tagging for the “Figurine” font you wish the browser to use for the display, the symbols won’t appear properly on the reader’s computer if they don’t have the same font installed. Until next month, have fun! All the software described in this column, as well as many more programs, are available in the USCFSales Online Catalog. ChessBase Cafe welcomes readers’ questions. Send one along and perhaps it will be answered in an upcoming column. Please include your name and country of residence. Yes, I have a question for Steve! © 2008 Steve Lopez. All Rights Reserved. |
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