About this project

This is a project to make public domain fonts for Chess games. While a number of Chess piece diagram fonts are available, none of them, to the extent of my knowledge, are public domain.

In keeping with Armando Hernandez Marroquin’s naming scheme for Chess Merida, these fonts are named after beautiful places in Mexico I have been to.

Cuernavaca

Chess Cueravaca is a public domain font suitable for making Chess diagrams. Its graphics are mostly based on public domain vector files available at the Wikimedia commons. Those vector files are in turn based on raster PNG images. The PNG images, in turn, are renderings of symbols in the open source Skak Chess Font, but do not, as per Eltra Corp. v. Ringer, fall under the license for that font.
Since the SVG files are derived from raster PNG images, Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc. does not apply.

Note that this font is not public domain in jurisdictions which allow fonts to be copyrighted, but is still available under an open source license. Since some jurisdictions which protect fonts only protect them for shorter terms, it appears that the Shak font was first published in 2002, so copyright expired before 2013 in Germany (10 years protection without registration), and expired before 2018 in Ireland (15 years protection).

To use, install the ChessCuernavaca.ttf file in the Cuernavaca/ folder.

The .svg files used in making the font are available in the Cuernavaca/SVG directory.

Here is a diagram made with the font:

There is some support for fairy chess pieces.

Tepoztlan

Chess Tepoztlan is a public domain font suitable for making Chess diagrams. The font is a vector conversion of the images in SmallPng.

The images are very loosely derived from two 19th century works:

• Images on the front cover of Benjamin R. Foster’s 1889 book Chancellor Chess.
• An image of a knight in Theophilus Thompson’s 1873 classic Chess Problems: Either to Play and Mate.

To use, install the ChessTepoztlan.ttf file in the Tepoztlan/ folder.

The .svg files used in making the font are also available in this directory.

Here is a diagram made with the font:

There is some support for fairy chess pieces.

In addition, I have made small png images for the black pieces.

Jiutepec

Chess Jiutepec is a font which uses versions of the Chess symbols in the Quivira font. Like the other fonts, the font is public domain.

The interface for making diagrams with the font is identical with the other fonts.

Using the fonts

All fonts here have the same mapping:

• A is a white upsidedown bishop
• S is a black upsidedown bishop
• D is a white rook + knight fairy piece (or upsidedown rook)
• F is a black rook + knight fairy piece (or upsidedown rook)
• G is a white upsidedown knight
• H is a black upsidedown knight
• P is a white pawn
• O (the letter) is a black pawn
• R is a white rook
• T is a black rook
• N is a white knight
• M is a black knight
• B is a white bishop
• V is a black bishop
• Q is a white queen
• W is a black queen
• K is a white king
• L is a black king
• A + is an empty black square
• A (blank space) is an empty white square
• To put a border around a chess diagram, use !"# on the top row, $ on the left side, % on the right side, and /() on the bottom.
• Examples of the fonts being used in documents are in the folders Tepoztlan/Examples and Wikimedia/Examples.

Uppercase pieces are on black squares; lowercase pieces are on white squares.

Note that the mapping is (generally) compatible with Chess Merida and Armando Hernandez Marroquin’s other excellent freeware Chess fonts.

Here is the standard international chess opening setup (#518 for Chess960 players) in all of the fonts included here:

!""""""""#
$tMvWlVmT%
$OoOoOoOo%
$ + + + +%
$+ + + + %
$ + + + +%
$+ + + + %
$pPpPpPpP%
$RnBqKbNr%
/(((((((()

The following text looks like the starting position for Modern Carrera Chess (where an upsidedown bishop also has the knight’s move, and the piece which is a knight with rook is the rook + knight piece) in the ChessTepoztlan font:

!""""""""""#
$tSmVwLvMfT%
$OoOoOoOoOo%
$ + + + + +%
$+ + + + + %
$ + + + + +%
$+ + + + + %
$pPpPpPpPpP%
$RaNbQkBnDr%
/(((((((((()

Note that the font works best on a QWERTY keyboard (since the corresponding black piece is next to the white piece; e.g. V is a black bishop where B is a white bishop). Uppercase is a dark square; lower case is a light square.

SmallPng

The SmallPng directory consists of low resolution Png files.

The .png files mainly come from my first-2000s-decade attempt to make public domain graphics for the Chess Variant playing engine Zillions of Games. Since this engine only supported low-resolution bitmap graphics, the images here are low resolution png files.

The images are based on 19th century Chess images, which, due to their age, are public domain.

Since I was unable to find a suitable public domain Knight image back then, I recently took an image of a Knight from Theophilus Thompson’s 1873 classic Chess Problems: Either to Play and Mate. The other images are very loosely based on images on the front cover of Benjamin R. Foster’s 1889 book Chancellor Chess.

In both cases, the images are Public Domain: They were published before 1922 (yes, here in 2022, the cut off is before 1927, but it was 1922 when I made most of these images).

See also

• https://github.com/samboy/ChessMeridaFairy I have added some Fairy Chess support to Armando Hernandez Marroquin’s classic Chess Merida font.
• https://github.com/xeyownt/chess_merida_unicode Another mapping of Chess Merida
• https://github.com/joshwalters/open-chess-font An open source Chess font based on Colin M.L. Burnett’s chess figures.
• https://github.com/samboy/OpenChessFontFairy My version of an open source font based on Colin M.L. Burnett’s figures, which is compatible with Chess Merida and Chess Merida Fairy.