This page contains comments by users and reviewers on
ExaChess. The reviews are now very old and refer to ExaChess
1.0. If you know of a more recent review, please contact
Exant
Software.
Comments from
Users
Review #1. Chess CHAT, November
1997 (update)
Review #2. Virginia Chess
Association, July 1997
Comments from Users
These are some excerpts of comments received back from
ExaChess users and testers:
"I'm loving ExaChess to death. What a great
piece of work..."
"I'm totally impressed with Exachess' ability to
effortlessly read PGN, NIC, CBase, NICAscii, NTRAscii
(from CBase) and practically anything else I can throw at
it. It's ability to import text and/or binary game files
is so smooth and intuitive that other chess authors will
be copying you for years."
"Exachess' ability to kill duplicates, search across
files, and do simple position searches, is excellent! You
have succeeded beyone my wildest hopes in putting a
powerful database on the Mac."
"Keep up the good work! ExaChess beats ChessBase hands
down!"
"Again, a great product, and one that I'd happily lay
out money for right now!"
Review #1. Chess CHAT, November 1997
(update)
Chess CHAT (newsletter of the Compuserve Chess
Forum)
EXACHESS - CHESS DATABASE FOR THE MACINTOSH
John Rummel
November 1997
Australia's Rolf Exner spent over two
years developing Exachess. As the user will discover, this
was time well spent; Exachess is the chess database program
that Mac users have been waiting years (decades?) for. I was
one of Rolf's early beta-testers, and I quickly realized
that this product would meet all of my chess game management
needs.
Exachess is a powerful game management program, making
juggling a database of hundreds of thousands of games a
breeze. The program includes the database application
itself, a comprehensive on-line help facility, as well as
balloon help (but no Macintosh Guide), and a rudimentary
playing engine based on Gijbert Wiesenekker's ZZZZZZ engine.
Exner has also added support for Bob Hyatt's "Crafty"
engine, Gnuchess 4.0 for the Mac, and most recently, the
excellent PPC native MacChess. With these external engines
installed (by just dropping them in the Exachess Tools
folder) analysis of the current board position, or a playing
opponent is just a click away.
Exachess' games management abilities are impressive. A
sub folder inside the Exachess folder is named "Exachess
Games." Any database files placed within that folder
automatically show up under Exachess' Games menu, where they
can be opened at the click of a mouse. Individual database
files may contain upwards of 140,000 games apiece, but since
Exachess automatically searches across all files in the
Exachess Games folder (or a user selectable subset), large
database files are not necessary. I have my games folder
separated into subfolders based on ECO code, with
supplementary files for my own games, and special
collections I'm working with for various reasons.
An "all databases" window can optionally be made
available to show you at a glance how many games you have,
and how they are stored within the Games folder. From this
window, you can optionally select just a subgroup of your
games for further searching. This is useful, for example, if
you just want to search from certain of your database files,
and not from your entire collection (e.g., just new games,
or just ECO C, etc.).
From a database window, sorting games is as easy as
clicking on a header in the window. Click on "name" and the
entire database is quickly sorted by name. Clicking on
event, result, opening, etc., resorts the collection
immediately. You can also perform searches based on header
information and opening variation names in the database
window, which makes it very easy to find all the games
played by a certain individual or at a certain event.
The speed of sorting is quite impressive: on a 120 Mhz
PPC, 25,000 games can be sorted in about 2 seconds (Exachess
is fat binary, running native on PPC Macs). On 680x0 Macs,
all operations will be slower, though still plenty snappy.
The same 25,000 game sort took about 20 seconds on my
Powerbook (a 33 Mhz 68030).
Double clicking on any game in a database window opens a
game window split into a chessboard on the left, and a move
list on the right. You can click through the game with a
series of VCR style buttons, or jump instantly to any move
by clicking on that move in the list. You can accomplish the
same feat from the keyboard using the cursor keys.
Subvariations can also be entered from any position, and can
be nested within one another. You can have unlimited
multiple game or database windows open at a time. Drag and
drop between windows is not supported, but selected games
(or a whole database) can be copied into another database,
or a new file, by using the clever "save to..." hierarchical
command from the File menu. Using this feature, it's easy to
organize and manage large collections and separate games by
any method you choose.
Exachess uses its own binary file format for databases.
Game info is stored in the data fork of the file, and the
index info is stored in the resource fork. Exachess also
transparently recognizes ChessBase and NICBase file formats,
allowing you to open and use those files as if they were
Exachess data. The same is true with PGN files. Upon opening
a new foreign format database for the first time, Exachess
indexes it (usually in seconds) and thereafter opens and
manipulates it as though it were native Exachess data. As if
this were not enough, Exachess also seamlessly imports
nearly any text style of chess game presentation, including
NTR games, NICAscii games, and nearly any ASCII format you
can throw at it. Exachess also imports EPD (extended
position description) formatted files. A very handy feature
is the ability to copy a series of games from a database
window, and then paste them into a text file (or email
message, etc.). The games are stored in the clipboard in PGN
format, and when pasted, you have perfect PGN. I've used
this feature in the Compuserve Chess Forum countless times.
It is a huge timesaver.
Positional searches across a single database or all
databases are done via a Search command. Games can be
searched for by name, year, event, result, opening (ECO or
name), or by board position. Positional searches can be
based on the current position in the game you are viewing,
or based on positions set up from scratch. The positional
search criteria are not as flexible as those in ChessBase,
but they are still quite powerful. You can choose to ignore
pieces or pawns, search based on pawn skeletons, or on many
other criteria. A positional index makes searching by
position very fast.
In fact, performing quick searches may be Exachess'
strongest suite -- it's very easy to quickly toggle from a
position in a game to the "All Database" window,
command-select a few database files (or all of them), and
then let Exachess get to work. After the search is
performed, you'll find yourself looking at a sorted list of
games and move order statistics. These tell you which moves
led to the position, and which moves lead out of the search
position. They also provide game statistics like percentage
of wins for each side based on the following moves. This is
an extremely hand feature for postal play.
Toggle the Opening Tree feature and Exachess displays all
opening variations played from the board position (relative
to the open database, or the database selected in the "All
Databases" window.
Duplicate searching and removal is quick and painless.
User configurable duplicate criteria insures that you won't
delete valid games. Duplicate games are shown as highlighted
in a search result window, allowing you to quickly delete
them or alternatively, save them to a new database for later
sorting/research.
Exachess is a true Macintosh program, written by someone
who understands the significance of the Macintosh OS, and
the importance of doing things the Macintosh way. It is not
a Windows program that was ported to the Mac - it is a Mac
program from the ground up. On that basis alone, it is a
pleasure to use and a breeze to learn. Both the database and
the game windows sport smartly designed toolbars making the
most often used commands easily accessable.
Exner is distributing Exachess as a commercial product
(called Exachess Pro), but has a freeware version (Exachess
Lite) available that supports many powerful features.
Exachess Lite is suitable for maintaining smaller
collections such as casual students might want for personal
games collections, or to serve as postal record keepers, for
example. The lite version also operates as an external
interface for playing engines like Crafty. Exachess Pro is
the full featured program described in this review and is
suitable for serious students of the game wishing to
manipulate and search large amounts of data. The price is
approximately $95 US, a little more for a six-disk set that
contains a starter database of 70,000 games. Exachess Pro
will also automatically support Ken Thompson's Endgame
Database CD-ROMs (though I understand Thompson is no longer
distributing these).
Macintosh using chess players have long waited for a
powerful games database program for their chosen platform.
The release two years ago of Chessbase's Mac version was a
huge disappointment, both from the standpoint of cost and
the clunky Windows interface - a near total disregard for
Mac user interface design issues. Mac users don't want, and
generally won't pay for Windows software jerry-rigged to run
on a Mac. They'd rather wait for someone to do it right.
That wait is over.
Contact John Rummel.
Visit his Web
Site.
Review #2. Virginia Chess Federation,
July 1997
Rolf Exner's Chess Database & Toolkit for
Macintosh
Forks, Pins & Skewers the Competition!
by Macon Shibut
July 1997
Several noteworthy developments have occurred since the
publication of my 'Chess Publishing on the Macintosh' in
Virginia Chess 1997/#1. First, as those who visit the VCF
web page will already know, the elusive William Orton, of
ChessWriter fame, has been found! For this I owe a debt of
gratitude to Selby Anderson, Editor of Texas Knights. Turns
out Orton has an, ...uh..., interesting web page from which
you can acquire the latest version of his supreme little
chess shareware utility. See for yourself at http:
//www.best.com/~hogeye/
More good news: ChessWriter 5.3 costs only $20. On the
other hand, it might not matter much in view of the second
development, previewed briefly in Virginia Chess 1997/#2:
ExaChess, a full-featured chess database system from
Australia of all places. It offers the same easy
cut-and-paste text access to chess variations that is
ChessWriter's stock in trade, but then it goes so much
further that unless you're on a strict software budget it
would be ridiculous not to opt for ExaChess.
I'm not inclined to again devote so many pages to a topic
that may not interest many readers, but neither do I want to
leave the impression that ExaChess is somehow less
substantial a program than ChessBase for Mac, which I
reviewed at length. In a head to head matchup I find
ExaChess the hands down winner overall. Here's why:
Price: ExaChess can spot ChessBase rook odds in this one.
Give or take a few bucks due to fluctuation in exchange
values, ExaChess can be had for slightly less than $100--a
third of what you'll shell out for ChessBase.
System Requirements: If you've got an older Mac, forget
about ChessBase. It needs at least an 86030 processor. You
should also have about 10mb RAM available for it (although
it will supposedly run on a third of that). SE/30 owners
will also want to pass on ChessBase, since many of it's
dialog windows don't fit on your built in screen, besides
which they require color to be intelligible. ExaChess, on
the other hand, runs on any Mac. I've tested it on 030, 040,
and PPC machines and darned if it hasn't performed
seamlessly on them all. B/W or small screens are no problem
either, and the required memory partition is only 2.4mb
(although it will of course improve things if you can give
it more). This reminds me, though, that if you have a really
old Mac, that's one case where you might want (or need) to
stick with ChessWriter. Its RAM appetite is just a minuscule
1/2 mb.
Search Utilities: Okay, in Elo terms, ChessBase is a 2800
monster with its supreme, versatile search options. It's
hard to imagine a query one could not form by thoughtfully
combining ChessBase's various filters. In comparison
ExaChess is 'merely' solid 2500 player. If you have specific
technical search requirements, it's possible that only
ChessBase can do things you want. However, for the sort of
questions most users ask most of the time'Let me see
all Kasparov's isolated queen pawn games'; 'Let me see all
games with such-and-such an opening'--it offers more
flexibility than you'll need. And in one important respect
ExaChess is the superior program of the two: unlike
ChessBase, it lets you specify a 'wild card' character in
names, venues, etc. Thus a search for 'Kor*' games will net
all Victor's efforts whether they're entered as Korchnoi or
Kortchnoij.
Speed: Don't make me laugh. I could give little bar
graphs like the computer magazines but they'd look silly.
ExaChess is so much faster--performing searches in seconds
that might take ChessBase minutes. In fairness, a direct
comparison is not as simple as it might seem because the
programs reflect fundamentally different philosophies on
accessing information. ChessBase offers alternate search
'keys' which trade hard disk space for speed and hold out
the promise of instantaneous access for common search
criteria--opening (ECO code) or players' names, for example.
With keys in place, ChessBase doesn't properly 'search' a
database at all; it already has the answer. However, only
the ECO key is built into ChessBase, and the utilities for
automatically maintaining other keys are not available for
Macintosh users. So for now at least, you must create and
(more burdensome) manually assign games to whatever special
keys you want.
Stability, Interface, etc: Experienced Macintosh users
will feel right at home in ExaChess. More important,
ExaChess will feel at home in your machine, unlike the
ported-from-Windows ChessBase. Everything works more or less
the way you expect it should. Menus and dialog formats are
familiar looking and the program doesn't load up your hard
drive with oddly-named files. Indeed, it can 'Macify'
ChessBase files for you--combine all those things with
arcane suffixes under a single icon. (Besides ChessBase
data, ExaChess can read NICBase, PGN, EDP, & .fin
formats, plus its own native format. It can also interface
with external chess engines, for computer play/analysis.
)
Every now and then a computer program does something that
practically takes my breath away. ExaChess turned the trick
the first time I tested how tough it would be to reformat
games with notes that I might have typed into my computer in
days gone by--old annotations from Virginia Chess files, for
example. The manual was optimistic: 'All text entered into
the game window goes into the input box, whether entered
from the keyboard or by pasting in text from the clipboard.
Whenever you type Return or Enter, the text in the input box
is processed and added to the game ... You can type the next
move, an annotation to the last move, a series of moves, or
a whole game.' Well, we'll see..., I thought, as I pasted
the entire annotated text of an old Botvinnik game, just as
published, into a Board Window input box. I punched the
Return key and, wonder of wonders, it worked. No
reformatting of the input whatsoever, and ExaChess parsed
the variations and notes properly! Of course it's possible
to imagine files whose twisted syntax will not pass through
so easily. But the point is that the ExaChess interface is a
small miracle in the spirit of Macintosh's original design
ideal, deftly handling both text (annotations) and
structured data (a tree of moves) without bothering the user
over the distinction.
Support: Programmer Rolf Exner put his Email address in
the ExaChess manual. I've found him to be exceptionally
helpful, answering questions and eager to improve future
versions of his program. I've likewise found ChessBase
programmer Mathias Feist to be forthcoming, but there's no
getting around the fundamental truth that the Macintosh
platform is an afterthought for the folks at ChessBase.
Exner, on the other hand, is one of us.
See Original
article.
Other reviews by Virginia
Chess Asscociation
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