Portable Shogi Notation Library News

I've updated the PSN specification location on the sourceforge.net page. Just to save you time, it is now over at: http://genedavis.com/articles/2014/05/09/psn/

Also, for those looking for the shogi applet and the newer HTML5 version of the applet, they're over at http://japanesechess.org/free_applet.html and at http://japanesechess.org/shogi2014/ respectively.

This PSN library still works fine, as far as I can tell. If you notice any bugs, just let me know over on Twitter @TGeneDavis

The first draft of the PSN Specification is posted at http://www.japanesechess.net/psn/

The primary effort was to include as many existing variations as possible in the specification. It seems to be successful at that.

The javadoc for the Portable Shogi Notation Library has been posted. Here's the link.

http://www.japanesechess.net/psn/psn_lib_doc/

The first version of the reference API and PSN reader is finished. All correct Portable Shogi Notation files should now be parsable by the reader. The next step is to create an installer for the PSN reader and instructions for finding and reporting bugs or inadequacies in the API. At that point detailed work on the PSN White Paper will begin.

Doing testing and debugging of the library. Already made big fixes to how handicap games are parsed. Also fixed how verbose notation is parsed. May still be some problems with certain types of capture.

Notation parsing is complete. All none ambiguous notation will now parse with the code in SVN. Tracking down bugs currently in parsing, then moving on to saves of single record PSN files.

The preview images for the shogi board preview are done. Also, handicap boards as byte arrays has been completed. The generation of board display images based off byte array boards is in the works.

Initial dump of PSN Library is in SVN. More to come soon. Also, there is a screen shot of the demo app. The purpose of the demo app is mostly to give a good idea and starting place for people wishing to develop against the library. The demo app also doubles as a very basic shogi database viewer.

All of this should be considered alpha quality at this point.

We're starting out with a library to test the PSNs that already exist and the KIF files that exist. Once that is working, we can with some confidence produce a White Paper inclusively describing the current PSN format in detail, and how to convert to and from KIF format. Most of the first code will be donated from Samurai Chess this week. Look for it in the SVN repository.