From: Arnoud Kleynjan <akleynjan <at> IXDIRECT <dot> COM>
Date: 19 mar 2001
Subject: Re: name of the pieces, colours, symbols, notation...

Hi,

>   The use of figurine notation when possible makes it easier for
international players. So
> far, there is no way to play shogi but learning those japanese symbols
(kanji),
> then let's use them as figurine notation. The main problem is that for
some western
> people those glyphs look very similar and are therefore more difficult to
learn.

I agree that sooner or later every shogi will (have to) learn the kanji
characters, color coded or otherwise. And I think most books etc. already
use kanji.

But to use a kanji true-type font in e-mail message is a lot of work (doing
insert - symbol all the time <G>), and it'll only work for those mad enough
to use Windows *and* an e-mail reader that will properly show rich text or
something like that. It won't work for the (decreasing? number of) apple
users, nor for the (increasing! number of) unix users.
That's what I ment with "keeping in mind the limitations of today's PCs".

Just typing "gold", "silver", or "+G, "=S", etc. is much faster. And because
it's faster, many people will continue to do just that.

> P.S.: Are there no public domain TrueType
> fonts for shogi pieces?
Not as far as I know. But, as said, I'd love it if someone told me
otherwise.

Arnoud Kleynjan