Winboard Forum

Hello,

I am searching for a tool which can read (non standard) text describing chess moves and can emit standard pgn output.

The input might have some often used shortened version of the notation, where in pawn captures, the rank of the destination square is omitted. Example: 1.e4 d5 2.ed (instead of 2.exd5).
I have found the tools pgn-extract and scid import from pgn which succeed in understanding the above notation.

I would also like the program not to fail when it encounters text inside the moves, but rather to treat it as a comment. For example:
1.e4 d5 the Scandinavian 2.ed --> 1.e4 d5 {the Scandinavian} 2.exd5
The above two tools fail this task.

The best would be for it to also understand the following, though I don't have much hope.
1.e4 d5 2.Nc3 (on 1...c5 I had also planned 2.Nc3) --> 1.e4 d5 ({on} 1...c5 {I had also planned} 2.Nc3) 2.Nc3
that is, to understand the comment as a variation and move it to its correct position.

I wonder if there is such a tool, and if not, could you point me to other tools I have not yet tried (even though they might fail as well)?

Christos Gitsis wrote:Hello,
could you point me to other tools I have not yet tried (even though they might fail as well)?

Here's a complete list:
http://www.computer-chess.org/doku.php? ... riter_list

Umm, WinBoard and XBoard don't seem to be on that list. So presenting it as 'complete' is a bit misleading. Especially since after reading the question it seemed to me that these would be the obvious choice for this. The list seems to exclude all full-featured GUIs, and is just a collection of 'left-overs'...

XBoard does ignore anything non-compliant with the PGN standard, however. It is very robust at fishing anything that remotely looks like Chess moves from amongst garbage text; you can paste entire HTML tables into it of which only a single column contained moves. It is open source, so anything you want done that it doesn't already do can be easily added. Including otherwise ignored alphabetic text as comment to the preceding move could easily be added as an option. (There already exists a similar feature in ICS mode that adds received tell messages as comments.)

XBoard does consider everything between () a recursive variations, but does not actually examine what is in it, and just considers it part of the comments to that move. You would be able to 'open' the variation by clicking it in the Edit Comment window, after which it will be parsed as PGN, (ignoring the interspersed non-complient comments).

H.G.Muller wrote:Umm, WinBoard and XBoard don't seem to be on that list.

If you look at my post you will see that I quote the part of it that I was answering. Namely:
"could you point me to other tools I have not yet tried (even though they might fail as well)?"
Since this is the Winboard Forum I would expect the poster to be familiar with Winboard and not consider it an 'other tool'. Nonetheless, you are right, Winboard belongs on that list and I will add it.

H.G.Muller wrote:So presenting it as 'complete' is a bit misleading.

Please point out another list of PGN tools that is more complete than this one.

H.G.Muller wrote:Especially since after reading the question it seemed to me that these would be the obvious choice for this. The list seems to exclude all full-featured GUIs, and is just a collection of 'left-overs'...

The list is entitled 'PGN Reader/Viewer/Writer List and miscellaneous tools'. Including a full-featured GUI under this title did not enter into my thoughts.

Some of these other authors are: Jim Ablett, David Barnes, Ferdinand Mosca, and Fonzy Bluemers. I think that calling their software 'left overs' is insulting and unfair.

Ron Murawski wrote:If you look at my post you will see that I quote the part of it that I was answering. Namely:
"could you point me to other tools I have not yet tried (even though they might fail as well)?"
Since this is the Winboard Forum I would expect the poster to be familiar with Winboard and not consider it an 'other tool'.

Well, he said what he tried: pgn-extract and SCID. I concluded that he had not tried XBoard/WinBoard, because if he had, he would not have been asking if this was possible...

Please point out another list of PGN tools that is more complete than this one.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'more complete' or 'less complete', any more than that my grandmother is 'less dead' than Napoleon. Something is either complete or it isn't. The list certainly is the most extensive list I have seen, and most of the stuff on it I had never heard of. But presenting it as 'complete' suggests that there is no point in looking for anything not on that list, and that would definitely be a mistake, as some very powerful PGN-handling software is just not on that list. And note that I called it only a bit misleading.

The list is entitled 'PGN Reader/Viewer/Writer List and miscellaneous tools'. Including a full-featured GUI under this title did not enter into my thoughts.

I am not saying they should be there. There is much to be said for listing full-featured GUIs separately. The only thing I wanted to correct was your posting here, which presented it as 'complete'. Because I thought that really pointed the OP in the wrong direction.

Some of these other authors are: Jim Ablett, David Barnes, Ferdinand Mosca, and Fonzy Bluemers. I think that calling their software 'left overs' is insulting and unfair.

No disrespect was meant, and I did put it in quotes. But from looking at the list it seems that there were not so much specific criteria applied to qualify for the list, (the listed software is very diverse in nature), but very specific criteria where applied to exclude software from the list (namely full-featured GUIs as XBoard, SCID, ChessBase, Shredder, Aquarium...). I am not a native English speaker, so I might not always be sufficiently aware of negative connotations some words carry, but 'left-overs' seemed an accurate description of what you are left with after taking away a very specific selection...

H.G.Muller wrote:

Please point out another list of PGN tools that is more complete than this one.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'more complete' or 'less complete', any more than that my grandmother is 'less dead' than Napoleon. Something is either complete or it isn't. The list certainly is the most extensive list I have seen, and most of the stuff on it I had never heard of. But presenting it as 'complete' suggests that there is no point in looking for anything not on that list, and that would definitely be a mistake, as some very powerful PGN-handling software is just not on that list. And note that I called it only a bit misleading.

Your understanding of English seems very keen. My intention was to say that the list is as complete as I have been able to make it. I apologize for my misuse of the English language, professor HG. I did not intend to mislead, not even by a 'bit'.

H.G.Muller wrote:But from looking at the list it seems that there were not so much specific criteria applied to qualify for the list, (the listed software is very diverse in nature), but very specific criteria where applied to exclude software from the list (namely full-featured GUIs as XBoard, SCID, ChessBase, Shredder, Aquarium...).

The criteria to appear on the list is to have some sort of PGN tool capability. There was no specific criteria to exclude any software from the list. Like I said: Including a full-featured GUI under this title did not enter into my thoughts. You said "very specific criteria where[sic] applied to exclude software". You are making it sound like I deliberately excluded software from the list and this is not true.

H.G.Muller wrote:

The list is entitled 'PGN Reader/Viewer/Writer List and miscellaneous tools'. Including a full-featured GUI under this title did not enter into my thoughts.

I am not saying they should be there. There is much to be said for listing full-featured GUIs separately. The only thing I wanted to correct was your posting here, which presented it as 'complete'. Because I thought that really pointed the OP in the wrong direction.

To remind you: I responded to the portion of the OP post "could you point me to other tools I have not yet tried (even though they might fail as well)?" and I posted the link to the list in response. There was no intention to deceive or misdirect on my part.