Show HN: Pretty-print your chess games using Prettier

galleywest200 · 2025-01-04T15:43:05 1736005385

I was actually thinking of developing something similar to make it easier to copy my chess game review comments into my Obsidian notes.

Thank you!

gmasclet · 2025-01-04T18:29:38 1736015378

You're welcome!

By the way, something I've considered but not implemented yet are options to tweak the formatting (for instance, whether to indent or inline comments / variations). The Prettier approach is to be opinionated, but some language-specific options may be useful.

cxcorp · 2025-01-05T00:22:38 1736036558

I've always wanted to look into writing my own Prettier plugins, how'd you feel about getting started working with their little mini DSL (fill, join, hardline, line, etc.)?

gmasclet · 2025-01-05T16:04:42 1736093082

The DSL itself is pretty nice. However, one thing I found annoying is that the printing function itself is hard to unit test: there is no easy way to instantiate its parameters (in particular the `ASTPath` class). So I relied on testing it by calling `Prettier.format()`, which is more a end-to-end test of the whole plugin. Maybe I'll figure out another solution at some point.

tacone · 2025-01-04T16:07:06 1736006826

What about using a fenced code block?

thangngoc89 · 2025-01-04T17:11:22 1736010682

You mean inside markdown? Prettier supported that since 2017 [1], it will call the individual plugins to handle content inside the code blocks.

[1]: https://prettier.io/blog/2017/11/07/1.8.0.html

toolslive · 2025-01-04T16:16:27 1736007387

PGN is just a format to communicate the games. So pgn pretty-printing is at the same level as pretty printing json. Nothing wrong with that, but at some point you might want to publish a game with diagrams variations, ....

For that purpose, you can use Latex (yes, I know, not everybody's cup of tea)

https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Chess_notation

andix · 2025-01-04T18:03:24 1736013804

This looks a bit cumbersome to write to me.

I really like the JS preview/rendering plugins for fenced code blocks in Markdown. For example Mermaid, which is supported by many Markdown renderers or IDEs. [1]

It would be fun to have something like this for chess notation, that interactively renders the last position with forward and back buttons.

Static PDFs are mostly a thing of the past.

[1]: https://github.blog/developer-skills/github/include-diagrams...

gmasclet · 2025-01-04T18:34:37 1736015677

Thanks for the idea, I'd not considered it. LaTex may have some use, I'll take a look. Indeed, probably the best solution to publish a game with diagrams.

For personal notes, I would also consider embedding PGN into Markdown. Sadly, PGN rendering in Markdown isn't supported yet, as far as I know (something like Mermaid would be awesome).