HTML Diagram

<html-diagram>
    Create chessboards with just text – a lightweight Web Component
</html-diagram>

Features

• Perfect for printing on paper
• Allows creation of old-school and unique-looking diagrams
• Scales infinitely without quality loss (as it doesn't rely on image formats)
• Zero dependencies
• Lightweight: the modules (ES and CommonJS) are each around ~5kb
• Friendly to your CPU

Supported browsers: Chrome 105+, Safari 16.4+, Firefox 110+

Note About Fonts

List Of Supported Fonts

Warning

All fonts used in the demo are marked as Freeware by their respective authors.
However, it is strongly recommended to review the README file of any font you intend to use.

The HTML Diagram itself does not include any fonts, as you can verify in the npm package files of the html-diagram package.

To display chess positions, users need to select a chess font for rendering diagrams. For this demo, I have used Freeware fonts generously provided by the Nørresundby Chess Club. Special thanks to them for making these fonts publicly available.

All fonts used in the demo are located in ./public/fonts directory. Each subdirectory follows this structure:

📂 Diagram<name>
├── 📄 Diagram<name>.woff2
├── 📄 ORIGINAL_FONT
└── 📄 ORIGINAL_README (if available)

woff2 versions

To achieve compatibility and minimize file size, each original font is accompanied by a woff2 version. The woff2 files reuse the following glyphs: king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, pawn, and empty square.

No modifications have been made to the design of the original glyphs.

The woff2 versions were created with FontForge, using encoding ISO 8859-5 (Cyrillic)

Basic Usage

1. Installation

npm install html-diagram

2. JavaScript

Import the HTMLDiagram class; then use it to create custom HTML element:

import { HTMLDiagram } from "html-diagram";
customElements.define("my-diagram", HTMLDiagram);

Learn more about "customElements" on MDN

3. CSS

Pick the chess font you like; then define it in CSS.

After you've read note about fonts, you can look in ./public/fonts directory, and pick something you like.

In this example, we'll use the lovely "Adventurer" font by chess fonts legend - Armando H. Marroquin:

@font-face {
    font-family: "Diagram Adventurer";
    src: "<your-path>/DiagramAdventurer.woff2";
}

Then, you must tell your diagram to use this font. This is achieved by using CSS variable:

my-diagram {
    --diagram-font: "Diagram Adventurer";
}

4. HTML

Use element on your page

<!-- empty board -->

<my-diagram></my-diagram>

Attributes

This component is attribute-driven. You can use html-diagram element by creating HTML pages with in-place attribute values (pure static HTML / SSR), or update it dynamically - Interacting With JavaScript

fen attribute

Forsyth–Edwards Notation. The most widespread approach for describing chess positions in modern software. You can provide full FEN record:

<!-- starting position -->

<my-diagram fen="rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"></my-diagram>

Or, just a first field, piece placement data:

<!-- starting position, using only piece placement data -->

<my-diagram fen="rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR"></my-diagram>

flipped attribute

Boolean attribute that rotates the board to show the perspective of the Black player.

<!-- Black's point of view -->

<my-diagram flipped></my-diagram>

<!-- or -->
<my-diagram flipped=""></my-diagram>
<my-diagram flipped="flipped"></my-diagram>

colored attribute

Boolean attribute that enables a colored mode for the diagram.

<!-- colored mode enabled-->

<my-diagram colored></my-diagram>

<!-- or -->
<my-diagram colored=""></my-diagram>
<my-diagram colored="colored"></my-diagram>

Combining Attributes

You can combine multiple attributes in a single html-diagram element to customize its behavior and appearance.

<my-diagram
	fen="rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"
	flipped
	colored
></my-diagram>

Interacting with JavaScript

You can update diagram attributes by using Element interface from standard HTML DOM API:

const myDiagram = document.querySelector("my-diagram");

myDiagram.setAttribute("fen", "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1");
myDiagram.setAttribute("flipped", "flipped");
myDiagram.setAttribute("colored", "colored");

myDiagram.removeAttribute("flipped"); // remove the flipped state

Styling

Universal Settings:

• --diagram-font: Font family for chess pieces
• --diagram-stroke: Stroke color for pieces and board

Colored Mode:

• --diagram-fill: Fill color inside chess pieces
• --diagram-light: Color of light squares
• --diagram-dark: Color of dark squares
• --diagram-outline: Outline around chess pieces. Use cqw units

Note

1cqw is equal to 1% of the diagram's width. This ensures the diagram remains responsive and proportional.
MDN: Container query length units

List of Supported Fonts

Note About Fonts

A heartfelt thank you to the creators and contributors of these exceptional Freeware fonts:

Font Name	Author	Year
Adventurer	Armando H. Marroquin	2000
Berlin	Eric Bentzen	1997
Cases	Matthieu Leschemelle	1999
Kingdom	Armando H. Marroquin	1998
Leipzig	Armando H. Marroquin	1998
Merida	Armando H. Marroquin	1998
Smart	Christoph Wirth	1992

If you know of any additional free (or Freeware) chess fonts, or if you’ve created your own, please feel free to share them with me!