French Defence

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by Frodo7
See also French Defence v2 by Frodo7.

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Chess font to use for games notation. The places of symbols may change later.

22 Comments

Comment by Frodo7 17th august 2009
Wow! That is some fine 'structing.
Comment by p2pnut 17th august 2009
A screenshot from MS Word, where this chessboard have been quickly assembled.
Comment by Frodo7 18th august 2009
marvelous. quite wonderful. i would think someone could easily make this into a very cool flash game. great job on the pieces - simple and elegant.
Comment by funk_king 18th august 2009
Clever, very clever. I love it.
Comment by jinx 18th august 2009
Check and mate. Love the knight.
Comment by afrojet 18th august 2009
Congratulations! FontStruct Staff have deemed your FontStruction worthy of special mention. “French Defence” is now a Top Pick.
Comment by gferreira_admin 18th august 2009
Great Idea / Great work!
Comment by jmarquez 18th august 2009
Great idea, Frodo. And beautifully FontStructed too.

Silly question: why did you chose to design the knight facing to the right? I feel it would be more natural to have it facing left (although I can't really explain why :-).
Comment by gferreira_admin 18th august 2009
isn't the black square usually striped in these things? for some reason i think it actually does help with clarity when it is. just my $.02
Comment by pauldhunt 18th august 2009
Thank you for your kind comments and generous ratings. It is a pleasure to share my work with people who value small things, as well as big ones.

@gferreira: on the "facing" of the Knight. It is a good point, and I can give you three possible answers. But let's have a joke first.

*************
The cowboy and his horse went into the saloon. As they stood at the bar the bartender turned around and asked him: why the long face?
*************

A1: I've made my sketches after a picture of a rose/cherrywood figurine, which happened to be in that position.

A2: As I experimented with bricks to shape a horse, by pure chance I hit upon this pretty configuration, or at least the core of it, and I was happy and content with ever since.

A3: This answer has strong implications with my forthcoming project, and I think it's not wise to talk about it right now.

Bilateral symmetry is a tricky phenomenon, not to be underestimated. I don't know whether it would look "more natural" the other way around or not. To me it's natural enough either ways. However, all commercial chess fonts (e.g. Linares, Hastings, Chess Alpha, just to name a few) have the Knight in the opposite position, so I think I ought to follow the tradition.

Speaking about chess fonts and traditions, there is a Unicode range dedicated to chess symbols (from uni2654 to uni265F), yet unsupported by FS. and there is built in support for in HTML (♔-♟) as well. I wonder why is it, that none of the fonts mentioned above have used it for their character map. They simply placed the figures according to some hobbit sense: white pawn to P, w king to K, w bishop to B, w rook to R, w queen to Q, w knight/horse to H, and the black ones to the corresponding lower case letters, so on and so fort. However, they are occasional and inconsistent if you compare and scrutinize them. Who should I follow to make a truly useable font for typesetting chess? Shall I invent my own keyboard layout?
Comment by Frodo7 18th august 2009
@pauldhunt: A very good observation. I have noticed that too. Too much black, not easy on the eyes. I've also considered the printer economy: to save a good deal of ink when printed at large sizes. I've been experimenting with different striped and checkered patterns to replace the solid black. It is not easy to find a suitable one, which seamlessly blends with the figures, yet leaves them untouched. Since it is a Top Pick now, I don't want to make any major unsolicited changes on it. It would not be fair. But I'll make a second version with all the healthy modifications incorporated. And more..
Comment by Frodo7 18th august 2009
Re black: I would leave the black chess piece shapes as they are and only make the representative squares striped. This should work as you already have a white outline around the black piece shapes...
Comment by pauldhunt 21st august 2009
J'adoooore! je prefere le v2, mais celui-ci est super... etant moi-meme francais, je suis tres content!
Comment by clem86 23rd august 2009
Petite question ( qui n'a rien a voir avec cette ecriture d'ailleurs ) comment on fait pour mettre un truc a la place du gros point d'interrogation a gauche???
Comment by clem86 24th august 2009
@clem86: Merci pour votre commentaire. Je suis un grand fan de la culture française. J'ai eu l'habitude à Paris quelque temps. Mais mon français n'est pas aussi bon qu'il devrait être. J'ai a oublié beaucoup de mots. Je m'excuse pour les erreurs possibles à l'avance.

J'ai choisi "la Défense Française" pour le titre au lieu du terme général "échecs" parce que ça sonnait bien. "Le Français" comme une ouverture dans les échecs a une réputation de la solidité et la résilience.

Votre question quant à la petite image à gauche j'ai répondu dans un message.
Comment by Frodo7 25th august 2009
I've changed the Knight: it is now facing to the left to follow the tradition. FS 2.0 made it too easy to skip.
Comment by Frodo7 10th july 2010
Keyboard layout

B - white Bishop on black square
b - white Bishop on white sq
H - white Horse/Knight on black sq
h - white Horse/knight on white sq
J - black Horse/Knight on black sq
j - black Horse/Knight on white sq
K - white King on black sq
k - white King on white sq
L - black King on black sq
l - black King on white sq
N - black Bishop on black sq
n - black Bishop on white sq
O - black Pawn on black sq
o - black Pawn on white sq
P - white Pawn on black sq
p - white Pawn on white sq
Q - white Queen on black sq
q - white Queen on white sq
R - white Rook on black sq
r - white Rook on white sq
T - black Rook on black sq
t - black Rook on white sq
W - black queen on black sq
w - black queen on white sq
Y/Space - White square
Z - Black square
Comment by Frodo7 10th july 2010
Comment by Frodo7 10th july 2010
Very delicate, laborious and excellent work. You're always taking a step beyond the others. Congratulations once again, FS master.
Comment by elmoyenique 22nd september 2010

Can you add the SUMA piece its similar to a two square pawn see https://www.vectorizer.io/images/93ceb7051bd0885b0d4a4ed85c741d7e/SUMA-blk.html or tiny.cc/samuraichess

Comment by openInvent 29th january 2018

Lovely 'dingbats', very detailed as contours only.

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My (not-so-related) minimalist pixel art (just for the Live):

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Chessboard Attack (2011, LCD) by Leszek Chmielewsk Daniel,
which I modified on 2016-09-19 as seen above.

Comment by dpla 21st february 2018

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