IntroductionPalview is a Win32 Console program for Windows. It is used to create Html with JavaScript for replaying chess games. The easiest way to use the program is to use Eric Bentzen's excellent GUI program, PalMate, written specifically to work with Palview. But this manual will explain how to use Palview by itself, without reference to another program. To learn how to use Eric's PalMate program, please consult his documentation. While we highly recommended that you use Eric's PalMate program, please read this manual thoroughly, as it will explain all you need to know about the features that Palview offers and how to use them. The actual chess games that Palview will convert are read from a PGN file. PGN is Portable Game Notation. This file is a simple text file with the .PGN extension and its creation was the work of the chess newsgroup(s) and Steven Edwards. Your own chess software will allow you to create games and export them to a PGN file. (Consult your software's manual on how to do this.) You can obtain a copy of the PGN Standard here: PGN Standard . For more information on Palview and PGN, please read the section, Palview and Portable Game Notation PGN. Once you have a game, or a collection of games, in a PGN file, you can get Palview to generate an Html-JavaScript page for you. But just what kind of page, with what features, would you like? You determine these options through the use of another file with the extension, INI. This is another simple text file that contains a number of lines that set the various options that are available with Palview. For now just accept that you can edit this INI file to change the settings. It is very easy, really. The many options that are available with Palview will be explained in more detail in the section The Palview INI File. They will also be discussed in various sections where they are of importance to the topic at hand. Once you have created an INI file that contains the settings for the various options that you want, you are ready to get Palview to create the Html-JavaScript page for you. You do this by passing, or sending, the PGN and INI files to Palview. You can do this in a number of ways, but the safest is to use the Windows Console. Under Win95, Win98, and WinMe, the Console is also called the MSDOS Prompt. Under WinNT and Win2000, the Console is a program called CMD.EXE. Essentially what you do is start either of these two programs and then switch to the directory, or folder, that contains your Palview program. If we assume that you installed Palview on your desktop, then you would type cd desktop\palview. This sets the current working directory to the palview folder on your desktop. Now you need to type the name of the Palview program, followed by the name of the PGN file. You would type something like: palview4 filename.pgn. All you have to do at this point is hit the ENTER key to start the program. Once the program is finished, you can hit the ENTER key again. Finally, you can type exit and hit ENTER to close the Console Window. Here is a picture of what all this would look like:  The reason why using the Windows Console is the safest way to use Palview by itself has to do with the way longfilenames are treated under the various Windows OS. The Console method is the best way of preserving your longfilenames under every OS. Other methods of passing the PGN file to Palview are likely to result in shortened filenames. Mind you, the very best advice is to simply use short filenames at all times. Any filename of eight characters (plus three more for the .PGN at the end) should insure that any of the other passing methods described below will also work. These other methods are also more convenient, so use short names and one of the methods below, but if you must use a longfilename then please use the Console method described above. (Better yet -- use Eric Bentzen's excellent PalMate program and let Eric worry about all these details!) Another way to pass files to Palview is to drag & drop the PGN and INI file onto the Palview4 program icon itself. To do this, click on the PGN file and then, while pressing down the Ctrl key, click on the INI file. This will 'highlight' both of the files, usually by turning their icons a bluish color. You can now grab the two files by holding down the left-mouse button on either of the highlighted icons and dragging them onto the Palview program's icon. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have a single folder that contains the Palview program and all your PGN and INI files that you intend to work with so that everything is visible. If you decide to place Palview in a folder that is separate from your working folder, then you will need to have your Palview folder open on the desktop in order to be able to drag the files onto it. Yet another way to pass the PGN and INI files to Palview, and much easier too, is to use a Shortcut placed in Window's SendTo folder. From the Win98 Help: You can add other destinations to Send To. In the Send To folder, which is located in your Windows folder, create shortcuts to the destinations you send files to often, such as a printer, fax machine, or particular folder. You can create this shortcut easily by first opening the SendTo folder, located in the WINDOWS folder, and then dragging the Palview program icon into the SendTo folder using the right mouse button. When you release the mouse button, you will be shown a short menu by Windows. Select the option 'Create Shortcut Here'. Another way is to click on the File menu of the SendTo folder, select New, then Shortcut. Then follow the instruction by Windows to locate the Palview program to complete the shortcut. Once you have created the Palview shortcut in the Windows SendTo folder, you can very easily pass the PGN and INI files to Palview. You select the PGN and INI files that you want to send to Palview by clicking on them as described above to highlight them. Now you can right click on any of the highlighted files and a menu will pop up. Select the SendTo option, and then click on Palview. Sending, or passing, the PGN and INI files to Palview will start the program itself. Palview will first attempt to read the INI file you passed it, or, if you didn't pass one, it will try to read the default palview.INI file located in the same folder as the PGN file. If no palview.INI file is found in the same directory as the PGN file, then Palview will try to read the default palview.INI file from the same folder as the Palview program itself. If there is still no INI file that can be located, then Palview will simply use the default values for the options as set by the program. Once the INI file has been read, the program will attempt to read the PGN file itself. If all this has been successful, Palview will then generate the HTM, an Html file, and possibly a JS, JavaScript file. These files will be created in the same folder as the PGN file. For more information on the types of Html pages that Palview can generate, please see the section The Palview Page Types. After Palview has created your HTM file, you can still make further changes to the 'look' of the page by editing the various class properties in the CSS file linked to the page. CSS is short for 'Cascading Style Sheet'. You will no longer need to use Palview to generate a new HTM page just to affect changes in fonts, color, backgrounds, etc. You can simply change the CSS. For more information on Palview and CSS, please see the section Palview and Cascading Stylesheets. All you need to know right now is that you can edit this CSS file quite easily to create a great many changes in the appearance of your HTM file. Once you have created the 'look' that you want, you can reuse the same CSS file over and over for all the pages you create with Palview. Once you have your Html page(s) and your CSS file all prepared, it is time to upload them to the server so that others can enjoy your work. It is important to note that many of the servers in operation today are Linux or UNIX based. These servers do not like mixed upper and lower case filenames in their Html references. For this reason we recommend that you always set your FTP program to automatically convert all filenames to lowercase when uploading your Palview generated files. This will save you a great deal of trouble. While we are on the subject, it is probably best for you to use lowercase filenames at all times since this will avoid any such problems right from the start. You do not actually have to install Palview. Since it is just a Win32 Console program, you only need to place the program in the folder that you wish to keep it in. By the same reasoning, if you should ever decide to uninstall Palview, all you have to do is delete it. One thing that you should avoid when deciding on the folder to keep Palview, is that you should NOT use a folder whose name contains a SPACE -- that will cause the program to become inoperable, since Win32 Console programs can't understand such folder names. So DO NOT place Palview in the 'Program Files' folder! Ideally, I would recommend that you create a palview folder on your C: hardrive and place the program there. There are a couple of other limitations to be aware of when using Palview. These are not at all difficult to live with. The first is that you should avoid using any SPACEs in the names of the files you pass to Palview, such as the PGN and INI files. (This is the same limitation as above.) You should also avoid long filenames If you are not using Eric Bentzen's PalMate program or the Windows Console. We recommend that you use filenames of eight or less characters (not including the extension name, such as PGN). Lastly, Palview allows a maximum of 1000 possible games in any PGN file you send to it. But that is far more than you will ever need for creating a web page, so this is really not a limitation at all, but we give you fair warning up front! Finally, the last limitation deals with the browsers that will be used to view the HTM pages that Palview creates for you and your website visitors. For most of these pages your visitors will need to have a version 4 or greater browser. Some of the more advanced, and newer pages, will require a version 5 browser. Much of this depends upon what type of page you decide to create and what features you select. These details will be expanded upon in the various sections devoted to each page type. We highly recommend the Internet Explorer 5 or greater browser or the new Netscape 6 or 7 browser. You can use the browser statistics below, collected by W3 Schools, to get a better grasp of just what most of your chess site visitors will be using to view your pages. One thing of note about the stats below is that you can clearly see the dominance of Microsoft's OS and Internet Explorer browser. As almost everyone is now using Internet Explorer 5.x or higher, your visitors should have no trouble viewing your Palview generated pages. Browser Statistics
Browser Statistics: Display Resolution: IE 6.x 59% 1024x768 or more 49% IE 5.x 34% 800x600 44% IE 4.x 1% 640x480 2% Netscape 4.x 1% Other (unknown) 5% Other Netscape 1% Opera 1% OS Statistics: Display Color Depth: Windows 98/ME 40% 32 bit 47% Windows XP 19% 24 bit 8% Windows 2000 30% 16 bit 40% Windows 95 2% 8 bit 3% Windows NT 2% Unknown 2% Macintosh 2% |