Xiangqi Ascii Board Parser

Update:

Since writing this, Richard's Play-by-email Server has created a graphical user interface for their Xiangqi system. As such, this program is all but useless. The graphical user interface can be accessed at: http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/mygames.php.

About:

I recently discovered "Richard's Play-by-email Server", that supports Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), at http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/. The text-only board representation isn't the prettiest in the world, however.

As I had been looking for an excuse to play with the Ruby programming language for a while, I thought I'd try and throw together a quick parser to turn the ASCII board into a nicer graphical one. This was reasonably easy, using the Gtk2 bindings for Ruby, and as the result is quite pleasing (if not amazingly written or particularly robust), I've decided to make it available to anyone that is interested.

Richard's Play-by-email server can be found here. (My username is "bluerain" if you feel like playing me!)

Screenshot:

Board Parser Screenshot

Download:

Linux:

Download the code here.

You will need Ruby and the Ruby-Gtk2 bindings installed. For Gentoo, `emerge ruby-gtk2` will give you the required packages. Other distributions will have other methods. The README file in the .tar.bz2 contains useful information, so I would advise that you read it.

Windows:

This program was written under Linux, but should work under any version of Windows which supports the Ruby programming language and GTK2 bindings. Follow the instructions on this page to install everything you need.

Once you have installed Ruby, download the code here, and unzip it to a folder on your computer such as "C:\Program Files\BoardParse". You should then be able to double-click on the board_parse.rb file to run the program.

It may be useful to create a shortcut to the program on your desktop. To do this, right-click on your desktop and select "New->Shortcut". In the text box marked "Location", type the following:

rubyw -C "C:\Program Files\BoardParse" "board_parse.rb"

(If you unzipped the file elsewhere than "C:\Program Files\BoardParse", then change the directory in the above line to match the location on your computer.)

The program should now run when you double-click on the shortcut. If you have any problems, feel free to contact me at joss@pseudonymity.net and I will do my best to help you out.