~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I used to have here a list of thanks to people who have contributed suggestions, bug reports, translations, etc, but it is now in the THANKS file. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SUMMARY OF SCID CHANGES BY VERSION: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.6: (February 2003) - Major cleanup of the user interface code. - Improved layout of some dialog windows which were too tall for 800x600 screens. - Revamped the Comment Editor window, to make adding marks and annotation symbols easier. - Improved the database switcher window; it is now fully resizable and only displays open databases. - Increased the maximum number of open databases to 9, including the clipbase. - Added comboboxes to recall history of past values in some entry boxes, e.g. White/Black/Event/Site in the Header Search field. The past value histories are saved between sessions. - Minor interface improvements, e.g. more consistent button sizes. - Fixed pasting of a position in FEN (with Ctrl+Shift+V) which worked in Linux but was broken in Windows. - Improved sorting of round names. If two rounds are equal up to a decimal point, Scid first tries to interpret the text after the dot as a number; for example "4.10" used to be sorted between "4.1" and "4.2" but now it comes after "4.9". - Added move announcement sounds. This was surprisingly easy, using the Tcl/Tk "Snack" sound package. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.5: (December 2003) - New "Player Report" window, similar to an opening report but for a particular player instead of an opening. - Opening Report window: New "Favorites" menu. - New option: "My Player Names" under "Options/Chesboard" menu. - Windows version: Scid now has its own icon, and the installer now creates file associations for Scid database (.si3/.sg3/.sn3) files. - Help pages: Renamed Index to Contents; added an Index help page. - Added new search boxes (for Event and Maximum mean Elo) to the Tournament Finder. - Many minor user interface improvements. - Cleaned up config/data/log file names and locations. - Lots of bug fixes and other small improvements, many contributed by Michal Rudolf and others. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.4: (January 2003) - Scid now comes with its own built-in chess engine called Scidlet which is used in Scid to suggest moves (for fast mouse move entry) and is also available as a WinBoard engine outside of Scid. - New window: Player Finder, which lists information about players in the current database. - Edit menu: Added "Copy position" (to complement the existing "Paste start board" command) which copies the current position to the clipboard/X-selection in FEN notation. - Moves on the main window chessboard are now animated. Use the "Options / Moves / Animate time" menu to configure the animation speed. - Added a board toolbar icon to optionally show or hide a small box beside the board showing the side to move. - Tree window has a new column showing the percentage of draws. - Maintenance window: added Description field, for storing a short (up to around 100 characters) database description. - Added MouseWheel support. In main window, Wheel moves backwards and forwards in the current game. Wheel scrolls vertically in most windows: Game List, Crosstable, PGN, Opening Report, etc. - Fixed bookmarks so they should now load the correct game even if game numbers are changed by compacting or sorting a database. - Added optional small analysis board to the Analysis window showing the position at the end of the best line of play. Also added "Low CPU priority" checkbox to Analysis window. - Tablebase window: added option of displaying a "results board"; select a piece on the board to show tablebase results for that piece relocated to any empty square on the board. - Game browser windows now have an autoplay button. - Added a black border around chessboard squares, with a user settable width in the Options/Colors... dialog box. - Added a toolbar to the repertoire editor window. - Added support for null moves, with the option of preserving them in PGN export (which is non-standard since there is no PGN standard for null moves) or converting them to comments for compliance with other software. - When importing PGN, if a game has a castling move that is not strictly legal because the rook or king had already moved, Scid now accepts the move but logs a warning message. Previously, it would report an error and not import any more moves from the game. This was changed because such castling is fairly common and is the most common cause of illegal moves in master games. - Now supports reading of multiple player photo (.spf) files. - Improved handling of en passant fields in EPD records. - More translatable messages for multi-language support. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.3: (May 2002) a. New "Piece Tracker" tool, for finding which squares a particular piece (or all pieces of a certain type) most frequently moves to, in games in the filter. b. New "Filter Graph" window, showing trends (by decade, recent year or rating) for games in the current filter. c. Opening Report: "View LaTeX" now uses dvips and ghostview instead of xdvi. d. Improvements to font selection. e. Added option to strip [%arrow ...] and [%mark ...] codes out of comments in PGN window and export files. f. The Exit dialog now alerts the user to any databases with unsaved game changes. g. More crosstable options. You can choose to show or ignore deleted games. Also, in all-play-all crosstables, column titles can now be configured to be partial player surnames or numbers. h. Delete twins: added options controlling which game to delete for each pair of twin games. Also squashed a small but annoying bug that was causing Scid to miss some twin games (thanks Gerard!) i. Added "Load previous game" and "Load next game" toolbar icons. Also made the toolbar more configurable: you can choose which icons should be displayed. j. Twin checker: added "Share tags" button for combining the tag information of a pair of twin games. k. Opening report window now shows a small board with the report position. Clicking the left mouse button on the board flips it. This allows saving of opening reports in LaTeX or HTML format with the board displayed from the Black perspective. l. Fixed a few small bugs, including rounding of performance ratings in crosstables. m. Maintenance window: new "Strip PGN tags" operation that finds extra PGN tags and allows the user to remove all instances of a particular unwanted tag. n. For Unix users: a new script, "sc_remote" which opens a Scid database or PGN file in an existing, running Scid instance where possible, avoiding opening the same database twice. Contributed by Mark Oakden. o. Added "Load Random Game" menu command in the Game menu. This loads a random game from the current filter. p. Improved the Tablebase window; it now shows which tablebases are available, provides a way to select a tablebase for examination, and has an information summary for most tablebases. q. Added a Recent files list to the main window File menu. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.2: (February 2002) a. Material search: added ability to specify a material difference, where Q=9 points, R=5, B=N=3 and P=1. Useful for finding specific endgames (like Rook vs Rook) where one side is up a pawn, for example. b. Header search: added fields for searching by the FIDE title of each player. It does not yet take into account the year in which a player received a title, but should be fairly useful anyway. Also added a Game number range, for easy selection of the first or last games in a database. c. New "Merge game" feature, available from the Game List right mouse menu (and also from the Best games list of the Tree window) for adding the selected game as a variation of the current game. Useful for annotating the opening of a game. d. New "Browse game" feature, available from the Game List right mouse menu, Best games list of the tree window, Crosstable and Opening Report. This opens the selected game in a separate window for browsing, without affecting the current loaded game. This is useful for previewing a game before loading it, and for comparing games. The is no limit to the number of "Browse game" windows that can be open at the same time. e. Keyboard move entry: Ctrl+Backspace now retracts a move, just like the right mouse button in the chessboard area. Also fixed a bug for cases where a pawn and Bishop capture clash (e.g. both bxc4 and Bxc4 are possible) so both moves can be entered with the keyboard; previously, the Bishop capture could be entered from the keyboard but the pawn move required mouse move entry. f. Mouse move entry: if "Show suggested moves" is turned off, you can now use two left mouse button clicks or dragging between two squares to enter moves. Previously, only dragging worked with the left mouse button. Also, a selected piece now moves following the mouse cursor when dragging. g. You can now draw arrows between squares with special commands in comments e.g. "[%arrow g1 f3 red]". h. Spellcheck results window: you can now choose whether to show ambiguous corrections. i. Improved reading of annotations in PGN: some which were causing errors if they appeared after a move without a leading space are now accepted without errors. j. Improved Tree caching so it should now be faster to move back and forward in a game when the Tree is open on a large database. k. Most tall Scid windows have been altered to work better with a smaller resolution such as 800x600, which is common on laptops. l. Large databases should now load a bit faster. m. You can now specify up to four tablebase directories. n. Cleaned up the Scid programming interface; there is now a documentation file (http://scid.sourceforge.net/doc/progref.html) explaining the programming interface for users who want to write programs in Tcl/Tk that access Scid databases. o. New translated languages: Swedish and Norsk. Also, French and Netherlands have been updated for the first time in a while. p. Options / Windows menu: new "Auto-iconify" option for turning off the feature ("d." below) added in 3.1 which iconifies all other Scid windows when the main window is iconified, as a few window managers seem to have trouble with this. q. The length of each game (in halfmoves) as stored in the Index file used to be limited to 255, so any game with more than 128 moves would appear in the Game List or Header searches to only have 128 moves. This has been fixed for 3.2. To update an existing database to have correct values, compact its game file. r. Much-improved Analysis engine selection. You can now choose where each engine should be started and sort the Engines list by name, estimated Elo rating or the date when it was last used. Also improved Engine communication, so Scid should work better with a wider range of WinBoard engines now. s. Comment editor: added "Insert mark" button for marking a square or drawing an arrow on the board. t. Improved the look of piece images in the chessboard. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.1: (December 2001) a. Opening report improvements: now in color and with many clickable items for selecting or loading games. You can also now exclude an uninteresting move from being shown in the theory table. b. A few improvements to Scid interaction with analysis engines. c. Small fix to autoplay mode, to make it stop when the end of the current game or variation is reached. d. Scid now iconifies all open Scid windows when the main window is iconified, and deiconifies them all when the main window is deiconified. This makes it easy to hide and show all open Scid windows with one mouse click. e. Added a new crosstable display mode, "Auto", which automatically chooses the best table format (All-play-all or Swiss) for the current tournament. Auto is now the default display mode. Also, All-play-all mode has been improved for two-player matches. f. Each Scid database can now store the number of the game to be auto-loaded whenever the database is opened. This option is settable from the Maintenance window. g. You can now color squares with special commands in comments, e.g. "[%mark g4 blue]", "[%mark h2 #000070]", etc. h. Annotate dialog (from the Analysis window) now offers the choice of only adding a variation for moves by one side, or when the first move of the line chosen by the analysis engine is not the same as the game move. i. The game information area now has an option for showing the full comment for the current position, instead of only its first few words. j. The Game List window is now user-configurable; just press the left or right mouse button on a column title for a menu. k. Updated a few out-of-date help pages. l. With keyboard move entry and auto-completion mode turned on, Scid now beeps when adding each move. m. Fixed a few other small bugs from version 3.0. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 3.0: (November 2001) a. Improved index file format (see details below). Databases created with Scid 2.x can be upgraded to the new format when they are first opened in Scid 3.0. b. 12 new user-settable "flags" for marking games with various chess characteristics: tactics, pawn structure, interesting endgames, kingside attacks, etc. c. The EventDate tag is now stored in the index file, so it can be used for sorting a database. d. Index format improvements have made tree searches faster for most common early opening positions. e. The improved index format has made most simple endgame searches faster, e.g. for my 500,000-game database, finding all Knight and pawns vs Knight+pawns endgames improved from 2.4 to 1.7 seconds. f. The game list can now display an estimate of how many comments, variations and annotation symbols each game has, not just whether it has any. g. Find Novelty: can now choose to search all games or only games older than the current game. h. Added Edit menu commands to strip all comments or variations from the current game. i. Tree window: New "Best games" window, listing the highest-rated games in the currently displayed tree branch. j. PGN window: Pressing the middle or right mouse button anywhere now pops up a window showing the board position at that location in the game. k. Opening Reports: a few small format improvements, and more options for customising the report sections. The options are now saved to the user options file. l. The Email manager can send mail using SMTP instead of sendmail, so it can now also be used with Windows systems. (Thanks Kayvan!) m. Analysis added from an analysis window to the current game is now added as a real variation (used to only be added as a comment). n. The Database Switcher orientation can now be changed (from horizontal to vertical stacking of databases) using its right-mouse menu. o. New "Bookmarks" feature, for bookmarking important games. p. The Header search can now search the PGN representation of each game for matching text, enabling searches for text in the extra PGN tags or comments of a game. q. A new "Tip of the day" window, which shows a random hint. r. Some of the most commonly-used windows (the switcher, PGN, and tree window) can now set to automatically open at startup. s. Most window locations and sizes are now saved in the options file when "Save Options" is selected. t. Fixed a rare bug that could cause game data corruption when copying games using the Database Switcher window. (Thanks Jens!) u. Unix: user files are now stored in the directory "~/.scid", so the options file is now "~/.scid/scidrc" instead of "~/.scid". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.7: (October 2001) a. New feature: "File Finder" window, for easier finding and opening of Scid databases, PGN, EPD, and Repertoire files. b. New feature: "Tournament finder" window, showing tournaments that meet certain criteria (date, country, average rating, number of players, etc). c. New "Paste start board" command for easier importing of a starting position copied from another program such as XBoard. d. Added new optional "column" style for the PGN window and exported games (LaTeX, HTML or PGN format), which prints the game moves in columns with one move of each side per line. Also a couple of improvements to the display of variations in LaTeX format. e. New feature: "Find Novelty", for finding the first move in the current game not played in any games of the selected database. f. Analysis window: Added new frame showing history of evaluations for the current position. g. Board search: added "Ignore colors" option, to search for the current position with the board flipped and colors reversed. h. Added option to print player ages in crosstables. Ages are computed from spelling file data. i. Improved graph windows, and added ability to save Tree, Ratings and Score graphs to a color or greyscale PostScript file. j. Improved interface for selection of board and piece colors, including a number of predefined schemes suggested by users. k. Scid now adds a default extension (html/pgn/tex/sor) when saving a file, if the user entered a filename with no extension. l. Scid no longer asks for confirmation when copying games to the clipbase, but still asks when copying to any other database. m. Opening report: now even more configurable options. n. PGN importing: now accepts (and ignores) en-passent indicators, as in "exd6ep", "exd6 ep", "exd6e.p.", and "exd6 e.p.". Also now accepts a non-breaking space character (ASCII code 160) as whitespace. o. Bug fix: Training mode with an analysis engine was not playing King moves. p. The File Open menu command can now open any type of file Scid can use: Scid databases, PGN, EPD, and Repertoire files. q. Added Tie-break scores option to crosstables, for printing Sonneborn-Berger scores in All-play-all tables and Bucholz (sum of opponents points) scores in Swiss tables. r. Bugfix: a long tag in a game exported in PGN format could wrap to the next line; it now always printed on one line. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.6: (August 2001) a. A new toolbar in the main window for fast easy access to commonly-used menu functions. b. New feature: a "Lock" button in the Tree window, for locking the Tree to the current database. With this, you can use one database while seeing the Tree of another database. c. The Email Manager now lets you keep track of when you received and sent email messages. d. The Game Export functions (in the Tools menu) now have extra user configurable options: whether to use symolic annotations (for example, "! +=" instead of "$2 $14"), and whether to indent variations and comments. Also, with HTML export you can choose from two diagram styles. e. Crosstables can now be saved in LaTeX format; previously they could only be saved as HTML or plain text. f. Twin detection can now optionally compare only the first four letters of each name when comparing player names, instead of requiring an exact match. This helps to detect many more twin games which no not have the same exact spelling of player names. g. Games with a non-standard start position can now be detected as twin games. I cannot remember why they ever were excluded from twin detection, or see any good reason to keep excluding them. h. Some changes to analysis engine code to try and avoid freezing Scid when navigating a game very quickly while an analysis window is open. i. ECO classification: you can now choose to reclassify only games played in the last year or month, which is useful for speeding up reclassification after adding new games to a large database. j. New "Cleaner" command from the Maintenance window, which lets you initiate a sequence of maintenance functions on a database that Scid will perform without requiring user interaction. k. You can now resize the main window height to change the height of the game information area below the chessboard. Also, the first few words of a comment are now displayed in this area, e.g. "(comment: A good move since...)" instead of just indicating there is a comment with "(comment)". l. Clicking the left-mouse button on the main window status bar now cycles to the next database slot. m. Added John Wiegley's "pgnfix" program (that cleans up PGN files) and "eco2pgn" (converts scid.eco to a PGN file) to the scripts directory. n. New "Trial" mode ("Try variation"), for trying out a temporary variation without actually changing the current game. o. Set the default location Scid looks for the spelling and ECO files (if the user has no options file) to /usr/local/share/scid/, since that is their default "make install" directory. p. Fixed an annoying bug: if you navigated through a game when the comment editor was open, Scid would change the game status to altered even if you had not edited any comment or annotation. q. Updated several help pages and added a footer to each help page indicating its last change, guessing 2.5 for any pages not updated for Scid 2.6. r. New language translation supplied: Brazil Portuguese. s. A few other small tweaks and bug fixes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.5: (June 2001) a. New "Repertoire editor" feature, for managing your opening repertoire and using it to search databases. b. Improved Scid to work better with engines that use the XBoard version 2 protocol. Scid now uses the engine's analyze mode for any engine that uses the new protocol and has an analyze command. c. Analysis window: new "Add Move" button which adds the best-line move to the current game. Also new "Training" button which waits for the autoplay time delay each time the user makes a move, then makes the best-line analysis move -- effectively playing against the user with a fixed amount of time per move. d. Improved the name spellchecker so it points out ambiguous corrections instead of arbitrarily choosing one of them. Each ambiguous correction is now shown in the spellcheck results window with "Ambiguous: " before the correction. e. The spellchecker now also ignores the last five characters in a player name when they are the sequence " (ABC)" where ABC = any three uppercase letters. This means player names with country codes can still be spellchecked. f. The rating difference (in Header search) is now White rating minus Black rating, not an unsigned (absolute) difference between the larger and smaller rating. g. New configurable option in Opening Report, for setting the number of extra note moves (past the last column) in the theory table. h. New "Knockout" mode in the Crosstable window, for better printing of knockout tournaments. i. The Unix/Linux configure script now checks if your system already has the zlib library, and uses it (instead of compiling the version that comes with Scid) if possible. j. The Game List window has a new "Save..." button for saving a text list of the current filter games (one line per game, in a fully configurable format) to a file. k. Added more players and sites to spelling.ssp and ratings.ssp. They now have over 7000 players and over 500 sites. l. The spellcheck file now has general prefix and suffix corrections, which are used to help standardize Event and Site names. m. Scid can now read GZip-compressed spellcheck files, so you can keep ratings.ssp.gz compressed to save disk space. n. New "Tablebase" window, which shows more tablebase details about the current position. It has a Training button for playing against a tablebase. o. Scid can now have two analysis engines open at the same time. p. A few minor bugfixes here and there... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.4: (May 2001) a. New "Training" mode in the Tree window: turn it on and Scid plays against you each time you move, by selecting a random move from the tree (according to the relative frequency of each move). b. Two new columns in the tree window: AvgElo and Performance. Each is only shown when the average rating or performance is based on 10 or more ratings. Also added an AvYear column showing the mean year of each move played. These improvements required a change to the tree cache file format, so any old ".stc" files created from earlier Scid versions will be ignored. c. Two new Game menu commands: Load first game and Load last game, for quick access to the first and last games in the filter. d. Extended the Name Editor window to allow replacing the rating for a player (useful for setting a player rating for all games in the current tournament). e. When exporting games, you can choose to export the games with or without comments and variations. Also, you can choose to create a new file or add games to an existing HTML, LaTeX or PGN file of games exported by Scid. f. More multi-language support: deleting twins, name editor window, database compaction, sorting, etc. g. I wrote a program for automatically converting all the Scid help pages in to HTML files. The HTML help files are available in the "help" subdirectory. h. Expanded the scid.eco openings classification file. It now has over 8000 positions, and about 180 of the 500 basic ECO codes now have Scid extensions. i. In the ECO Browser window, you can now click on a line to paste it in the "Import PGN Game" window. j. Added "calendar" dialog box for selecting a date, available from the game save/replace window. This is only available with Tcl/Tk versions 8.3 or newer. k. A few improvements to the Opening report: new subsections listing the most frequent players (as White and as Black) of the report line, and their score with the line. There is also a new column in the theory table: each row shows the number of games contained in all the row notes, and the percentage score of those games. Another improvement is a new "Options" command in the File menu for customising the report. l. Increased the game limit for a Scid database from 3 million to 4 million games, at the request of a user who actually has a database that large. m. New language supported: Czech. Fixed Scid so it should now work properly with languages that use the iso8859-2 character set (Czech and Polish), if appropriate fonts are being used. n. New submenu in Edit menu: "Promote variation to Main line" which swaps a variation at the current position with its parent. Thanks to Manuel Hoelss for writing most of the code for this! o. Each search window now reports search results via a status line at the bottom of the window, instead of showing an annoying message window after each search. p. Most tall Scid windows are now shorter, making Scid more user friendly at low screen resolutions such as 800x600. q. Header search can now search for a rating difference, for example for games where the players were within 100 points of each other. r. Changed the score graph window, when showing scores for a game that has been annotated with crafty's "annotate" command, to expect the scores to always be from White's perspective which has been standard since version crafty 18.1. Earlier crafty versions had the scores from the perspective of the side to move. s. New Tree window File menu commands: "Copy tree text to clipboard" which copies the tree window contents to the clipboard and primary X-selection, for pasting into another application such as a text editor. Also, "Fill cache file" which does a tree search for about 100 common opening positions and saves the tree cache file. t. New maintenance window command: "Add Elo ratings", which uses a modified version of the spellcheck file with rating history info for each player, and adds Elo ratings for players wherever the rating for each player at the date of each game is known. u. Fixed a couple of memory leaks, and improved memory usage a little. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.3: (March 2001) a. The compaction (of name and game files) and database sorting functions that were only available in the "scidt" command-line program, are now available in Scid itself (from the File: Maintenance menu or the Maintenance window). Even PGN files and read-only databases can be sorted, but the sort results are only permanent when sorting a regular (not read-only) Scid database. b. Improved layout of Maintenance and Header search windows, making them wider but shorter which is better for users with low-res screens. Still need to reduce the height of the Delete Twins and Material Search windows... c. Improved the speed of ECO classification, by about 40%. d. Much more multi-language support: game information area, maintenance window, opening report, and the ECO Browser are all multi-language. e. Some updates to help pages, mostly to reflect the changes to database compaction and sorting. f. Ability to make an opened database read-only, to prevent accidental changes. To be writable again, it must be closed and re-opened. g. Improved Help window: it now remembers what part of each page was visible, so when you go back to previous pages, the part you were viewing is displayed. h. Improved usage of estimated ratings: they are now shown in the game list window, in parentheses. They are also used in header searches. They are not yet shown in the crosstable window, but may be in a future version. i. Player name corrections improved: names that appear to be surnames only are now not corrected, unless the user requests that they are. This is useful since these corrections are often wrong. The spelling file is also larger, over 6000 players now. j. When you "Save Options", the current widths of the game list columns are now saved to the options file. k. Better handling of player names when converting from PGN: spaces at the start of a name are removed, and if a name ends " (xxxx)" where xxxx = four digits, that part is removed from the name and treated as an Elo rating, so for example: [White "Kramnik, V (2780)"] is imported as if it was: [White "Kramnik, V"] [WhiteElo "2780"] l. Improved shortcut keys: many control key shortcuts (like Ctrl+L to open the game list, Ctrl+4 to switch to the clipbase, Ctrl+F to reset the filter, etc) are now available in almost all Scid windows. m. Fixed a few small bugs from version 2.2. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.2: (January 2001) a. Scid is now released under the Gnu General Public Licence (GPL). Previous versions had a more restrictive licence, but I now feel the GPL protects Scid enough and should encourage more people to use, contribute to, and distribute Scid without having to worry about yet another non-standard copyright licence. b. Added support for showing help pages, menus and status bar messages in other languages. c. Added new types of "current board" search. All require the same exact material and side to move as the current board, but you can search just by pawn structure, or by the files pawns are on. The pawn structure search is very useful for openings, while the pawn files search is good for finding similar endgames. d. New "Opening Report" feature which produces interesting facts about an opening position and an ECO-style theory table. e. The Board, Header and Material search windows are no longer modal, so you can have them all open at any time (and the Search button in each of them is disabled when you are not in an open database). f. Scid now loads game number 1 whenever opening a database, rather than just showing the empty "game 0". Looks much nicer. g. Scid can now read a FEN/EPD string on the command line, as one argument or as multiple arguments. For example, the following lines both open the database "base" with the French defence (1.e4 e6): scid base "rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/4p3/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq" scid base rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/4p3/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 2 h. It is easy to open and use the Tree window, then close it but forget to save the cache file. Added a new Tree window Options menu entry to auto-save the cache file whenever the Tree window is closed. i. Scid nows shows a progress bar when opening a database, which is helpful for large databases. j. It was confusing that Tree searches ignored games marked for deletion, since they will still show up for positions found in the tree cache. The tree now shows all games that match, even deleted games. k. Scid used to encode EventDate value (e.g. [EventDate "2001.10.16"]) in 12 bytes, which was a waste since dates can be stored in a more compact format. Scid now uses just 4 bytes when an EventDate tag with a valid date is stored, saving 8 bytes per game. For my TWIC database (where most games have an EventDate) this prunes the game file by almost 10%. l. Header search now also permits searching by Round name. m. New "Goto move number" menu command, with shortcut Ctrl+U. n. Scid now recognizes several rating types, not just Elo. The rating for each player in a game can now be one of 6 types: Elo (for FIDE ratings), Rating (for generic use), Rapid, ICCF, USCF, DWZ and BCF. More may be added in the future. o. Scid can now read coordinate-style notation, e.g. "g1f3" or "g1-f3" for 1.Nf3, which was requested by users for two different purposes: to import games from websites that send moves in this notation instead of proper PGN format, and to accept keyboard move sequences generated by the DGT board. p. Scid now estimates a rating for players with no rating in a game who do have a rating in at least one other game in the database. The estimate is the mean of the highest and lowest rating the player has in all other games in the database. Estimated ratings are indicated with a "*". q. Fixed interference between move entry keys and menu shortcut keys. Before the fix, Alt + a letter key (such as Alt-f for the file menu) added "f" as if it was part of a move entered by the keyboard. Now, letters entered while an Alt key is pressed are not treated as keyboard move entry. r. If there is only one variation at the current position, you can now enter it by just pressing "v" rather than "v1". If there is more than one, you still have to enter the number after the "v" of course. s. Ran some programs over the FIDE October 2000 rating list, automatically adding new players and making corrections to the spellcheck file. It now contains over 5600 players. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.1: (November 2000) a. New "ECO Browser" window that shows the positions used for each ECO code (if the ECO file is loaded), and shows the popularity and performance of each ECO code in the current database. Scid no longer uses an EPD file for ECO classification, it now reads the "scid.eco" file directly. b. Scid can now use Nalimov-format endgame tablebase files! Whenever the current position is found in a tablebase file, Scid will show the result and optimal moves in the game information area. c. Major overhaul of "delete duplicates" feature. It is now called "delete twins", and provides many options for adjusting the search for twin games. There is also a "twin checker" window which makes checking a deleted game against its twin easy. d. Added key bindings ("v" followed by a number to enter a variation, "z" to leave) so variations can be browsed without using the mouse. Also improved the game information area so variations are listed, and you can click on them to navigate the game. e. Made adding of variations more consistent. "Add Variation" used to add a variation replacing the last move, but this was inconsistent with all other variation operations which use the next (upcoming) move. Now, a variation of the next move is added, unless there is no next move (already at the end of the game or a line), in which case the variation is added to the previous move (the last move in the line). f. Some improvements to the PGN window: new menus, and more consistent indentation when you select "Indent Comments" or "Indent Variations". g. Several small interface improvements: remembering window sizes and saving them to the options file, etc. Also rearranged some menus, hopefully making them simpler. h. Improvements to the player info window: now in color, and you can easily set the filter to contain all games by the player, or all wins, or all losses with Black, etc. i. Simplified fonts, there are now just three basic fonts (named Regular, Small and Fixed) that Scid uses in all windows. j. Added three more command-line scripts for Unix users of Scid: "sc_spell" which spellchecks a database, "sc_import" which imports files of PGN-format games into a database, and "sc_eco" which recomputes the ECO codes of all games in a database. k. Added "-fast" or "-f" (or "/fast" or "/f" on Windows) command line option to Scid, which makes it start up faster without checking for tablebases, the ECO file or the spellcheck file. Also added "-xtb" option to avoid checking for tablebases, "-xeco" to avoid loading the ECO file, and "-xspell" to not load the spellheck file. Other options: "-s1", "-s2", ... "-s12" sets the initial board size. l. The "splash screen" (Startup info window) now auto-closes itself after startup, at the user's preference. m. Made the "results" section of Header searches aware of the "Ignore colors" setting, so, for example, searching for "Adams, Michael" as White, with "Ignore colors" selected and only "1-0" results will find all wins (as White or Black) by Michael Adams. n. You can now use wildcard-style searches (? = 1 character, * = 0 or more characters) in Header searches, if you put the search text in double quotes, for example: "* GER". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 2.0: (October 2000 -- long delay but worth the wait I hope!) a. New "Rating Chart" window, which graphs the rating history of one of both of the players in the current game. b. New "Maintenance" window, to make manipulating the delete flags of games and spellchecking names easier. c. Scid can now read GZip (.gz) files. You can open .pgn.gz files wherever you would open .pgn files, and .epd.gz files similarly. Gzip files are opened read-only and will not be modified. d. You can now choose to display coordinates around the board. I find them very annoying, but I know the feature will help users who are new to chess notation. e. The board now looks much nicer, since chess pieces now have outlines (in board sizes 5 and larger). f. The tree window now has a "Graph" button for producing a graphical display of the relative results of moves from the current position. g. A few small interface improvements, such as removing the annoying error box if you try to load the next game when you are already at the last game in the database. h. Increased the game limit from 2 million to 3 million games in a database (yes, some Scid users really have a database that big!) i. Scid now uses less memory for large databases. Although an index file uses 41 bytes per game, Scid was using 56 bytes per game to store the index in memory. It now uses 48 bytes per game instead, a saving of around 15%. This will help Scid run a bit faster for huge databases. j. Improvements to exporting: the text printed at the start and end of the exported file (for example, etc at the start of an HTML file) can now be edited from the Options menu, and is saved when you save options. k. Added new key bindings: Control+Shift+ (left or right arrow) to change the board size. l. Renamed the clipboard database to the "clipbase", to avoid confusion with the "clipboard" in Windows. m. Spellcheck file improvements: - For player names, Scid can now detect surname-last format as well as surname-first, for surnames without spaces in them. Example: "G. Kasparov", will be now corrected to "Kasparov, Gary". - Merged the four files players.txt, events.txt, sites.txt, rounds.txt into one file (spelling.ssp) for simplicity. - Fixed small bug reading the spellcheck file, lines starting with a "%" (biography notes) were being mis-read as player names. - Expanded the players list in the spellcheck file. It now includes most players who have a rating over 2350, with over 5000 players. n. You can now search in variations for exact board searches, but not for material/pattern searches yet. o. Fixed a bug that was causing some games to be corrupted when compacting a large database after sorting it. p. Added numeric locale option, for setting thousands and decimal point characters. q. "Classify games" can now classify the games using basic ECO codes only, if you prefer them instead of the Scid extended codes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.8: (July 2000) ** New options for the Crosstable window: can produce all-play-all table or a Swiss tournament table. Can also sort by score, name or rating. Also added option for plain text table, which is much faster for large tournaments. You can also save the crosstable to a file, in plain text or in HTML table format. ** New game export modes: Scid can now export the current game or all games in the filter to an HTML or LaTeX file, including printing diagrams wherever there is a diagram symbol or comment in the game. ** Improved, simpler main window menu arrangement with new "Windows" menu. ** Minor improvements to Player Information window. ** Tree window now skips deleted games, since they are usually duplicates and including them taints the statistics. ** Move entry: left mouse button still the same (use it to make suggested moves, or to drag between squares) but middle button changed; it now is used to select squares for two-click moving (instead of dragging). ** Some people prefer the notation "1. e4 e5" to "1.e4 e5". Now you can have a space after each move number, see the "Options: PGN Window" menu. Thanks to Joel Rivat for this and other useful suggestions. ** Bugfix: When using tree window, squares on the board in the main window would sometimes be left colored gray (from earlier suggested moves) until the mouse moved over them. Now fixed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.7: (May 2000) ** First version of Scid for Windows produced. ** Scid can now spellcheck the player, event, site and round names in a database, and comes with four spellcheck files (players.txt, sites.txt, events.txt and rounds.txt) for this purpose. This makes the -E (name extension) option of scidt redundant, so it has been removed. ** New Player Information window: just click on a player name (in the game information box below the board, or in the crosstable window) to see information about the player: success rate, common openings played, and rating history. ** The Crosstable window now uses data from the Players spellcheck file if it has been loaded, showing the FIDE title (gm, im, etc) and most recent country for each player. ** The Game list window now has an entry box for entering a specific game number to display in the list, and an entry box for finding the next game that contains some text in its White, Black, Event or Site field. ** New "Hints" help page with tips in question-answer format. ** PGN importing: Scid can now also read compact algebraic notation captures with no rank, e.g. "ed" for exd5 and "ba=Q" for bxa8=Q. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.6: (March 2000) ** The Scid-specific book file format (.sbk) has been removed. Scid now reads and writes Book files in the standard EPD (Extended Position Description) format, for compatibility with other chess programs. The EPD format is described in the PGN Standard. Files in the old .sbk format cannot easily be converted to EPD since EPD files store more information. ** The standard Scid ECO file is now called scid.eco, not eco.txt, and "eco2book scid.eco" will create the file scid.epd for use in Scid. ** Tree window now displays an extra column for each open book file, which shows a summary of the text for the move displayed. ** Scid can now open a Book file from the command line, if it is specified with the .epd suffix, e.g.: "scid mybase mybook.epd" ** Scid can now import long algebraic notation, e.g. "1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6". ** The duplicate deletion feature now marks the shorter of two duplicate games as deleted, or the first in file order if they are have the same number of moves. ** Bugfix: when importing PGN games, Scid was not updating the name file, potentially leaving the database corrupted. ** Bugfix: scidt -E, -N and -C options were incorrectly resetting the index type icon back to the default blank icon; they now preserve the icon type. ** Bugfix: Defaults button in Header search was broken, now works. ** Bugfix: Paste game command in Edit menu was broken, now fixed. ** Bugfix: Scid with Tcl/Tk 8.3.0 was crashing when closing the tree window due to a bug in Tcl/Tk version 8.3.0 ONLY. Changed the code to avoid the Tcl/Tk bug, for those using 8.3.0. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.5: (March 2000) ** New Database switcher window. Provides easier switching between open databases, and copying all filtered games from one database to another using drag-and-drop. Each database has a "type" which is graphically shown in the switcher window; there are about 30 type icons to choose from. ** You can now open a PGN file directly in Scid, although PGN files use more memory, are much slower to load and are read-only so this is only recommended for small PGN files. ** Added Import games from PGN file command to the Tools menu. You can now import all games from a PGN file to any open database without needing to convert the PGN file with pgnscid first. ** In the board window, pressing and releasing the left mouse button on the same square now adds the suggested move for that square -- this means that to add any move other than the suggested move, you now need to drag between the two squares instead of clicking on each square in turn. ** Removed Export to clipboard and Import from clipboard commands from the Edit menu, because copying games between any two databases (not only to/from the clipboard) is now provided by the database switcher window (see above). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.4: (March 2000) ** New memory-only Clipboard database, for copying games between databases and for use as a temporary database. The clipboard can hold up to 10,000 games. ** Scidt -E can now take an optional player names text file that contains correct and alternate spellings for player names. A sample name file "names.txt" with over 3,000 player names is available at the Scid website. ** Improved analysis window setup a little, since the changes made in v1.3 were not working with Crafty on some computers. ** Crosstable window now displays average Elo rating and corresponding FIDE tournament category, and also shows the rating perfomance for each player that played five or more games in the tournament. It can also now handle up to 64 players in a tournament. Every second line is now shaded gray for easier reading. ** The game information box in the main window now has a popup menu for the right mouse button. ** Game list window right-mouse menu now includes commands to delete or undelete all games that are in the current filter. ** Header search now allows a restriction on the number of halfmoves in the game. This, combined with the "delete all filtered games" addition above, makes it easy to find and delete all games under a certain length. ** Scid now prints startup information to a splash window instead of standard output. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.3: (February 2000) ** Added duplicate game detection command, in the Files:Maintenance menu. (The Name editor command has also moved to that menu, it used to be in the Tools menu). Two games must have the same Event, Site, Date, Round, White and Black tags, and (mostly) the same moves to be duplicates. ** New Crosstable window. Shows the crosstable of all results from the tournament of the current game, for tournaments of up to 32 players. You can click on any result in the crosstable to load the game it represents. ** New "Autoplay" button in the main window: automatically moves forward one move every second. Ctrl+RightArrow turns replaying on or off, Escape key turns it off. When you use autoplay mode while the analysis window is open, Scid annotates the game by adding the analysis for each move as a comment. ** Analysis window no longer uses crafty-specific commands unless it sees "Crafty" at the start of a line, so it should work with most xboard compatible chess programs -- even those that do not have an analyze mode. I have used Crafty, Gnuchess and Phalanx successfully with the analysis window in Scid 1.3. ** Changed the default startup light and dark square colors to shades of brown. If you have a "~/.scid" default file, you will have to delete it (or edit it and remove the "set lite" and "set dark" lines) to see the new colors. ** Added a frame-resizing bar to the Import window so the error messages frame can be made larger or smaller. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.2: (January 2000) ** Added Scid treecache file, for storing the contents of the tree cache to speed up tree searches for large databases. Very useful feature, wish I'd done this a long time ago! The button "Write Cache file" in the tree window saves the current cached tree results to a file with the database name and the suffix ".stc". A tree cache file is redundant, and is just removed when any database operation might leave it out of date -- e.g. saving a game, sorting the database, etc. ** Added PGN import feature (for a single game) to Scid. Now you can paste PGN-format game text (or just some moves in algebraic format without a PGN header) selected from another window and view the game in Scid, without having to save the text to a file and convert it to Scid format. This feature also doubles as a convenient way to make a few changes to the current game: just open the import window, click on "Paste current game", type the changes, and click "Import". ** Added ability to load a particular game number, with the shortcut key Control-G (for "game" or "goto"). The games list shortcut key has been changed to Control-L (for "list"). ** Changed Header searches: player, event and site names entered for searches are now case-insensitive, and spaces are ignored. Example: "anand,v" will now match "Anand, Viswanathan". ** Comments at the start of a variation before any moves, example: 1.e4 ({This comment} 1.d4 d5) 1...e5 are now saved; in prior versions, they would not get saved. ** The game information below the board in the main window is now color-coded, making it is easier to read. ** Pgnscid now lets you specify a database name different to the PGN file name -- useful if you want the database to be created in a different directory from the PGN file. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.1: (January 2000) - Added "Book windows", support for editing Book files in Scid. - Improved the Game List window a lot, it is now much nicer to use. It now has a proportional spaced font, color-coded columns, and each column can be resized. - Rearranged the Tools menu, using submenus, to group related actions more logically. - Improved error messages when Scid cannot open or create a database. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 1.0: (December 1999) - Added the "Email manager", for sending correspondence chess emails. - Improved the Scid PBook (now just called "Book") format. Classifying games by ECO code is now much faster -- probably about twice as fast. - Added button bars to the Tree and Analysis windows. Added button in analysis window to paste the current evaluation score to the start of the current move's comment. - Improved memory management for comments, fixed a memory leak. - Fixed a very nasty bug: name files with a name that starts with an 8-bit ASCII value (greater than 127) could not be opened. - Fixed a bug that affected writing the name file after multiple changes with the name editor. - Improved some error messages in scidt and pgnscid. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 0.5: (November 1999) Major features at a glance: sorting databases, saving search settings, opening read-only databases, name editor. - Scidt now has a sorting option, to sort databases by many criteria. - Added "Name editor" window, for editing all occurrences of a particular player, event, site or round name. - More online help window pages, including a Quick Guide. - Scid can now open a database where the index or game file is only readable (not writable) in read-only mode, and indicates this with "%%" in the status bar. Very useful for protecting a large database you only use for searches. - Scid now asks the user before replacing a move that already exists in the game, but this can be turned off in the Options menu if the dialog box is annoying. - The right-mouse button in the main window now deletes the last move, instead of just moving backwards. - Material/Pattern searches: you can now specify a length of successive half-moves each game must match the search criteria for. Useful for eliminating games where the search criteria are only met for a move or two. - Header and Material/Pattern searches can be saved to a SearchOptions file (suffix: ".sso") for later use, and used with the "Open" menu entry in the "Search" menu. - Export of filter: can now be to a new Scid database (previously, only exporting to a PGN file was possible). Exporting to an existing Scid database is not implemented yet. - User can now vertically resize the Game list window to alter the number of games shown, and the setting is saved when Options are saved. - Improved key bindings, especially in Help window and Game List window. - Changed "Control+Alt" shortcut keys to "Control+Shift". - Pgnscid now accepts "~" as a symbol for the annotation "Unclear". - Log file for warnings/errors generated by pgnscid now has the suffix ".err" instead of ".log". - Bitmaps for buttons in main window of Scid, which look nicer. - Some bug fixes: - Fixed memory leak in copying of positions. - Fixed rarely-occurring bug in reading positions from FEN strings. - Removed "const char *" to "char *" assignments that are not accepted by new compilers, apparently. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 0.4: (September 1999) - Too many to mention! Some of the more important changes: - Hypertext-style online help within Scid. - Status-bar tips for menus and buttons, describing their meaning. - More options for scidt, the database maintenance utility. - More search facilities, e.g. for games with/without comments, variations, etc. - Most searches that involve decoding moves are a little faster. - Keyboard move entry. - More settable and saveable options. - Nicer NAG (annotation) editing frame in the comment editor window. - More shortcut keys. - Several bug fixes; Scid should be far more stable with large databases now. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 0.3: - Added a font selector dialog box, so fonts can be changed without editing the start.tcl file. - Added options for PGN display. Previously, display was always in color; that can now be turned on or off. User can now choose to indent comments, which is useful for heavily commented games. - Coloring the PGN display is much faster than it was, although it is still a lot slower than plain display. - Added saving of options (to the file .scid in the user's home directory). Saves board size, PGN display options and fonts. The options file is automatically loaded at startup if it exists. - Added a Flip Board option, to have Black on the bottom and White on top. - New search available: on current board. Previously, the only way to do this was to turn on tree mode. - In tree mode, each move now also has its ECO code displayed if it is in the ECO book file. - Added a Setup Start Board dialog box. Previously, Scid supported games with a non-standard starting position but there was no way to setup the initial board from within Scid itself. - Clear game now prompts the user for confirmation if the game has been altered. - There are now many more key shortcuts (e.g. Control + down-arrow to load the next game). Also, the game navigation keys (Home, End, and the arrow keys) now work the same in the PGN window as in the main window. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Version 0.2: - First public release version. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~