ExaChess - the premier chess database for the Macintosh


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ExaChess Reviews


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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