Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I'm revising my comments as I thought of a better idea:  

Mao would be [nWF] meaning moves as Wazir then Ferz in the same move and 
cannot jump. [WF] would be a synonym for N, as would [FW].  A piece that 
could move a a Mao or could stop on the first square would be W[nWF] (the 
Rhino from Captain Spaulding Chess, for example).  A hypothetical piece 
that could move as a Mao only if the orthogonally adjacent square is 
occupied could be [jWF].

This would be useful for bent riders, too: a Gryphon would be F[nFR] 
(or F[nFWW]), while the variety of Gryphon that can't move a single 
diagonal step would be [nFR] (or [nFWW]).

I prefer [nWF]to n[WF] as other cases might be amiguous.  Compare [nWA] vs.
n[WA]  does the latter mean that the Alfil portion of the move may not be
a jump? But [nWA] means that the Wzir move must be to an empty square,
while [nWnA] would designate a Wazir move followed by a non-jumping Alfil
move.

I think 'outward' should be implied and we need designators for the
contrary cases, which are less common.

I think that outward is the default usage within square brackets; the Rhino
is simply z[WF].

I don't know about [nWF] for the Horse.  Does nW make sense?

I'm still mulling over how to define a long leap, short of using up more
of the alphabet.  The curly brackets are possible.  Or parentheses.  And I
think the comma would be optional in that context.

Betza's Funny Notation has its merits, but it also has its weak points. 
It's great at concisely describing combination leapers, and OK at
describing the simpler types of riders, but as one begins to contemplate
the vast variety of fairy pieces (take a look at the glossary of
Problemesis for inspiration sometimes) that have actually been used in
games or problems, it becomes obvious that describing them all accurately
requires an enormous supply of modifiers (far larger than the number of
letters in the alphabet).

As an example, just look at some of the modifiers that Jorg Knappen had to
invent to describe the various crooked nightriders used in Nachtmahr.

I have begun a time or two to formulate a more general notation, but every
system I have come up with simply requires too much effort to decode. 
Quite simply, it is less effort for someone reading the rules to read a
natural-language description than it is to decode a sufficiently
complicated compact notation.

The Funny Notation is wonderfully concise and easy to decode for the those
pieces that it was originally designed for.  But the ad-hoc piling on of
modifiers can only be taken so far before it is no longer easy to describe
or decode pieces, and I think it's pretty close to that point at present.

Glenn is right, nW doesn't make sense.  I propose that the n for the
compound move be implicit, like 'outwards'.  So [WF] designates a piece
whose move consists of moving one square orthogonally to an empty square,
followed by moving one square diagonally outward to an empty or
enemy-occupied square.  The piece that can make this move even if the
orthogonal square is occupied would be designated N.  If the orthogonally
adjacent square must be occupied, then use 
j[WF].

Thanks for the catch.  I did get it backwards.  It is fixed now; the
notation on the page is really the Crab.  :)

Perhaps different symbols could be used for different types of capturing?
` short-leap capture
~ long-leap capture
! rifle capture
@ mutual capture
# 4-way sandwich capture
## 8-way sandwich capture
$ withdraw capture
% 4-way intervention capture
%% 8-way intervention capture
^ advancing capture
& co-ordination capture with royal piece
&& co-ordination capture with other pieces of same type
+ mutual capture and explosion on squares a wazir's move away
* mutual capture and explosion on adjactant squares

and a few others:
<> swaps place with friendly piece
<|> swaps place with enemy piece
<||> swaps place with any piece
>< immobilises adjactant enemy pieces
>|< immobilises ALL adjactant pieces
>+< immobilises enemy pieces a wazir's move away
>+|< immobilises ALL pieces a wazir's move away
= moves to the opposite side of the board before carrying out move(a1 to
h1, b2 to g2, etc)

'Betza's Funny Notation has its merits, but it also has its weak points.'

Well, yes. Why do you think I gave it that name?

My primary goal was to create a notation that would be easy to read and
that would be capable of describing many different pieces. In this
respect, of course the funny notation was a great success. It is now
almost a standard, and whatever notation is the next advance to supersede
my early attempts will probably contain some degree of backwards
compatibility.

I wanted as much as possible to avoid the use of all the strange
punctuations. This was because in my real-life career as a programmer for
3270 emulations used in hundreds of countries by tens of thousands of
users, I was intensely aware of the variations, not only in standard
'national ascii' but also in substandard mickeysoft code pages. I
eventually had to use square brackets [] but they often came out badly
because Hans's computer would treat them as dutch asciii mickeysoft
nonstandard code page.

My earlier notation, largely unpublished, used more squigglies and angles
and ^%$#!()*& stuff. 

The ultimate notation, that will be determined by international committees
sanctioned by the ISO (International Standards Organization) will of
course succeed at describing the most common pieces within the ASCII code
page, and the second tier of most common pieces within 8859-1. Unicode
will be exploited to carry the possibilities to their ultimate.

You cannot imagine that a work of this size could be conducted by a single
person. My funny notation was never intended to be the ultimate, merely a
necessary step along the way. I think that, as such, it has been a *great*
success.

Likewise, Chess with Different Armies. A hundred years from now, most
likely nobody will play chess without different armies, and very likely
nobofy will use the primitive armies that the long-dead Betza devised. (I
do hope to be remembered a bit.)
The golden age of chess variant development has only just begun.

The first thing I see right off that I would change is the = sign.  I think
the use of a > sign would more clearly imply 'becoming'.  So fnWfcF=*
would be fnWfcF>*.
Also, although you didn't state it, I infer the - for promotion to a
previously captured piece means from the owner's original array.

This is an excellent pedagocical presentation of Ralph Betza's
funny notation as it is. Thanks to Glenn for this.

Might I offer the possibly sacrilegious comment that it's time to update Betza notation? As excellent as it is, time has moved on, and new pieces cannot be easily described using the current notation. Several people, including myself, have done some extension of this notation to describe our own pieces, if nothing else. 

Once upon a time, I would have proposed a project here to update the notation, bring it into the 21st century. I probably know better now. So I'll just ask for everyone who has extended Betza notation to let us all know what you've done, with at least a brief but thorough description and a link to the complete work. 

I would suggest that Ralph's prohibition on symbols can be relaxed now, as it's unlikely that even minimally careful use of standard typewriter symbols will cause that many problems on today's webpages. 

Was going to end here [many might wish that I had], but decided I'd throw my hat into the ring with notation I developed for shortrange pieces of varying complexity. I use this notation and associated icons extensively in my designs, having found it a very useful shorthand for this sort of piece. So I'm hoping that all those game pages won't have to be changed at some time in the future. And while I'm not overly optimistic this will wind up next to Betza's work, I'll give it a serious try with the following condensed discussion of the warmachine and its various possible moves:

DW
0] Combine the dabbabah and wazir into the warmachine. The generic
piece can be identified as 'DW'. This identifies the components
without specifying any particular movement pattern.

D/W
1] OR. The warmachine may move as either one of its components, that is,
like a wazir or a dabbabah.

D+W
2] AND (linear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It may not change direction during this move.

D +/- W
3] AND (nonlinear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It *may* change direction during this move.

D/W + D/W
4] And-Or (two-step linear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as either
of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again.

D/W +/- D/W
5] AND-OR (two-step nonlinear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as
either of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again. It *may* change direction during this move.

[D+W]/[A+F]
6] [AND]-OR-[AND] (compound two-step linear rider)
The War Elephant. This piece may move as either the linear Hero, as seen above, or as its diagonal analog, the linear Shaman.

http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/joe-s-strange-notation is the wiki page with illustrations and a companion iconology for identifying how the pieces move.