emacspeak-chess (Emacspeak User’s Manual

12.31 emacspeak-chess

The Emacs Chess package provides a rich environment for playing and exploring Chess Games. That package comes with a light-weight module that announces moves.

This module aims to do much more, including:

Navigate the board along various axes with audio-formatted output.
Browse games via rich audio-formatted output.
Speech-enable all interactive commands provided by the Chess package.
Enable various means of exploring the state of game, perhaps with a view to being able to spot patterns from listening to the output.

Navigating And Examining The Board
Examining Games
Emacspeak-Chess Commands

12.31.1 Navigating And Examining The Board

The board can be navigated along the 8 compass directions. Arrow keys move to the appropriate squares on the board. / and \ move down the diagonals. [ and ] move up the respective diagonals.

Move North: emacspeak-chess-north bound to up.
Move South: emacspeak-chess-south bound to down.
Move West: emacspeak-chess-west bound to left.
Move East: emacspeak-chess-east bound to right.

You can also move along the diagonals:

Move Northwest: emacspeak-chess-northwest bound to [.
Move Northeast: emacspeak-chess-northeast bound to ].
Move Southwest: emacspeak-chess-southwest bound to /.
Move Southeast: emacspeak-chess-southeast bound to \.

You can also jump to a given board position by:

Jump: emacspeak-chess-jump bound to j.
Target of last move: emacspeak-chess-goto-target bound to t.
Look: emacspeak-chess-speak-that-square bound to l.
Review current square: ;.
Review Board: emacspeak-chess-speak-board bound to z. Useful in end-state.
Locate pieces: emacspeak-chess-speak-piece-squares bound to s. Specify piece as a single char — w speaks all white pieces, l speaks all black pieces, use SAN notation char for a specific piece. Use a to hear entire board, this last is most useful when the game is an end-state.
Discover who targets a square: emacspeak-chess-speak-who-targets bound to w. Argument piece is similar to the previously listed command.

You can obtain views of the board along the rows and diagonals, as well as a knight’s perspective :

Viewers: v followed by the directional navigation keys speaks the squares in that direction from the current square. vn speaks the squares from a knight’s perspective, i.e. the squares the Knight would see from the current position. similarly, vk speaks the non-empty squares seen by the King from the current position. v followed by a rank-or-file char speaks that complete rank or file.

12.31.2 Examining Games

Package Chess allows one to browse through a game using , and . — chess-display-move-backward and chess-display-move-forward. Emacspeak speech-enables these commands to speak the move that led to the currently displayed state of the game. Finally, m speaks the current move being displayed.

12.31.3 Emacspeak-Chess Commands

12.31.3.1 emacspeak-chess-east

Command: emacspeak-chess-east ¶

Move east one step.

12.31.3.2 emacspeak-chess-goto-target

Command: emacspeak-chess-goto-target ¶

Jump to the most recent target square.

12.31.3.3 emacspeak-chess-jump

Command: emacspeak-chess-jump (coord) ¶

Jump to square specified as coord.

(fn COORD)

12.31.3.4 emacspeak-chess-look-east

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-east ¶

Look east

12.31.3.5 emacspeak-chess-look-king

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-king ¶

Look along non-empty squares reachable by the king  from current position.

12.31.3.6 emacspeak-chess-look-knight

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-knight ¶

Look along non-empty squares reachable by a knight from current position.

12.31.3.7 emacspeak-chess-look-north

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-north ¶

Look north

12.31.3.8 emacspeak-chess-look-northeast

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-northeast ¶

Look northeast

12.31.3.9 emacspeak-chess-look-northwest

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-northwest ¶

Look northwest

12.31.3.10 emacspeak-chess-look-south

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-south ¶

Look south

12.31.3.11 emacspeak-chess-look-southeast

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-southeast ¶

Look southeast

12.31.3.12 emacspeak-chess-look-southwest

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-southwest ¶

Look southwest

12.31.3.13 emacspeak-chess-look-west

Command: emacspeak-chess-look-west ¶

Look west

12.31.3.14 emacspeak-chess-north

Command: emacspeak-chess-north ¶

Move north one step.

12.31.3.15 emacspeak-chess-northeast

Command: emacspeak-chess-northeast ¶

Move northeast one step.

12.31.3.16 emacspeak-chess-northwest

Command: emacspeak-chess-northwest ¶

Move northwest one step.

12.31.3.17 emacspeak-chess-south

Command: emacspeak-chess-south ¶

Move south one step.

12.31.3.18 emacspeak-chess-southeast

Command: emacspeak-chess-southeast ¶

Move southeast one step.

12.31.3.19 emacspeak-chess-southwest

Command: emacspeak-chess-southwest ¶

Move southwest one step.

12.31.3.20 emacspeak-chess-speak-board

Command: emacspeak-chess-speak-board ¶

Speak complete board. Only useful in end-states.

12.31.3.21 emacspeak-chess-speak-piece-squares

Command: emacspeak-chess-speak-piece-squares (piece) ¶

Prompt for a piece (single char) and speak its locations on the
  board.  Piece is specified as a char using SAN notation. Use
  ‘w’ for all whites pieces,  ‘l’ for all black pieces,
and ‘a’ for entire board..

(fn PIECE)

12.31.3.22 emacspeak-chess-speak-that-square

Command: emacspeak-chess-speak-that-square (coord) ¶

Speak square at specified coord.

(fn COORD)

12.31.3.23 emacspeak-chess-speak-this-move

Command: emacspeak-chess-speak-this-move ¶

Speak move at current display index.

12.31.3.24 emacspeak-chess-speak-this-square

Command: emacspeak-chess-speak-this-square ¶

Speak square under point.

12.31.3.25 emacspeak-chess-speak-who-targets

Command: emacspeak-chess-speak-who-targets (piece) ¶

Speak description of squares that can target current square.
Argument ‘piece’ specifies  piece-or-color as in command
  emacspeak-chess-speak-piece-squares

(fn PIECE)

12.31.3.26 emacspeak-chess-view-rank-or-file

Command: emacspeak-chess-view-rank-or-file ¶

View a complete rank or file from white’s perspective.

12.31.3.27 emacspeak-chess-west

Command: emacspeak-chess-west ¶

Move west one step.