Here are some step-by-step instructions which document how to add a chess font to groff

• firstly we need to download a suitable postscript chess font. The chess font files I’ve used successfully are: cheq.afm and cheq.ps. The last file cheq.ps should be renamed as cheq.pfa . So type:

  $ wget ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/chess/cheq/cheq.afm
  $ wget ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/chess/cheq/cheq.ps
  $ mv cheq.ps cheq.pfa

• now move these two files into your groff font directory. My groff installation exists under $HOME/opt and so on my machine the command would be:

  $ mv cheq.{pfa,afm} $HOME/opt/share/groff/1.19.3/font/devps

• now we need to create font files called CHESS , CHESSR , CHESSI , CHESSB and CHESSBI in the devps directory. Remember to use the font creation program which is distributed with the version of groff you are using.
• we can do this by:

  $ cd $HOME/opt/share/groff/1.19.3/font/devps
  $ ../../../../../bin/afmtodit cheq.afm cheq.pfa CHESS
  $ ../../../../../bin/afmtodit cheq.afm cheq.pfa CHESSR
  $ ../../../../../bin/afmtodit cheq.afm cheq.pfa CHESSI
  $ ../../../../../bin/afmtodit cheq.afm cheq.pfa CHESSB
  $ ../../../../../bin/afmtodit cheq.afm cheq.pfa CHESSBI

• now edit the file DESC in the current directory. Ensure that the line

  fonts 9 0 0 0 0 0 SS S ZD ZDR

• is changed to

  fonts 10 0 0 0 0 0 SS S ZD ZDR CHESS

• now edit the file download in the current directory and add the following line.

  Cheq                    cheq.pfa

• finally you can download the following chess macro and install it into the groff macro directory. So

  $ cd $HOME/opt/share/groff/1.19.3/tmac
  $ wget http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/download/groff/chess.tmac

• now to test the chess font, create a file, test.n which contains:

  .CS 24 8
  rnbqkbnr
  pppppppp
  ++++++++
  ++++++++
  ++++++++
  ++++++++
  PPPPPPPP
  RNBQKBNR
  .CE

• and create and view a postscript output file by: groff -mchess test.n > ps ; gv ps

hopefully you should see something similar to this:

the two parameters after the .CS macro indicate the font size to use for the pieces and axis labels respectively.

In the example below the values 34 and 10 are used.