Scid vs. PC

Scid vs. PC is an open source graphical software written in Tcl/Tk, a fork of the Scid (Shane's Chess Information Database) project, with a focus on usability and bugfixing.

Whem compared with Scid, this project features computer tournaments, rewritten Gamelist widget, which includes the Database Switcher, improved FICs and computer game features, clickable variation arrows, paste variation functionality, improved redo and undo, tri-coloured tree bar-graphs displayed in statistics.

Scid vs. PC also features book tuning remove move function, hideable separate board sections, a revamped Button Bar, clickable tablebase moves, restructured analysis engines, as well as countless bugfixes.

What is new in this release:

• When sorting databases, don't reset filter and remember current game/gamestate
• Game history menu
• Implement (and bugfix) SCID's more comprehensive NAG framework
• Change a couple of field orders in the gamelist, remember field widths, and remove the icon context menus from the switcher (middle click now toggles show/hide the database icons)
• FICS: Allow use of alternative URLs (used during FICS outage) and other minor tweaks
• Window focus improvements (mainly for MS Windows and OS X)
• Computer Tournament: add 'Engine Scores as comments' option, and make some minor global/:: var changes
• Add Book Tuning to dockable windows
• Automatically flip board (if applicable) in game browser and analysis miniboards
• When diffing twin games, ignore newlines in the comments, which make diffing impossible
• Add undo points for user generated addNag events
• Bookmarks: add a few key bindings (delete/up/down), and shuffle the gamelist bookmark button up one row
• Drag and drop hardening
• Windows 7 bugfix: PGN export and Progress bars weren't working in undocked mode
• Translation framework updates. Overhaul Dutch translation, and remove (broken) Russian one
• Convert braces '{', '}' to '(',')' when exporting PGN comments (against PGN standard). Also tweak various PGN help topics

What is new in version 4.9:

• Window Docking feature - Different windows are docked/restored than Scid. Five layout slots with three custom layouts. Bug-fixes. F11 for fullscreen. Tcl-8.6.0 may have issues. Selectable Ttk themes (also for Gamelist).
• General:
• Move search feature (eg 'h6 Bxh6')
• UCI: replace 'position fen ...' with 'position startpos moves ...' for general analysis
• Better Twin Games Checker - highlights missing comments and variations in duplicate games
• Windows has a MSVC makefile (Makefile.vc) and includes Stockfish 2.31 (JA legacy build)
• Fix windows stack problem (hopefully).
• Text Find widgets in help, crosstable, engine logs
• Game Save dialog remembers any custom tags you add to a game, making them easy to recall
• Restore drawing arrows and marks from the main board (also used by FICS premove)
• Arrow length/widths configurable via comment editor
• PGN Figurines now display in bold, and a different font, if applicable (from Gregor)
• Some new board textures (from Ed Collins)
• Automatically save "bitmaps" directory when exporting to HTML
• Player info window shows Photos in a scrollable canvas insead of stuck in top right corner
• Delete key deletes moves in game/variation after the current move
• Score Graphs are now bargraphs instead of lines
• Bind statusbar->middle button to 'switch base'
• FICS context menu, game offers now show more information, and premove
• FICS: deiconify/raise window when game starts (nodock mode only)
• FICS: stop clock when we make a move (even though we may not have acknowledgemnt from FICS about move)
• FICS: 'upload' command for uploading local games to FICS examine mode
• Allow the Name editor to glob '*' for Site, Event and Round fields (but not for 'All Games', too dangerous when used by mistake)
• The material board can display *all* taken pieces
• Gamelist button rows can be hidden by right-clicking the list, and it has a game save icon
• Right click V+ button adds the second variation
• Windows analysis engines no longer run at low priority
• When annotating the score on blunders, show the main score first, var second (eg: +1.00 / +2.50)
• Add programmers reference to the help contents/online doc
• Bind space-bar to engine start/stop
• Update twic2scid.py script
• Remember if .board is flipped for each open base
• Bugfixes:
• Make the database switcher icons/frames get smaller if they are cramped (so we can see them all)
• Half fix UCI game (sergame.tcl) time issues
• Corrospondence Chess now works
• Tree Mask bugfix: Checks couldnt be added to mask
• Fix Tree 'Fill cache with game/base' feature
• Try to handle shortened FENs with Paste FEN
• Crosstable: 'Set Filter' now includes deleted games if +deleted
• Crosstable: handle games with a year-only date differently for crosstable purposes (Instead of +/-3 months, match any other games in the calender year
• FICS: Stop clocks after a takeback request from opponent
• FICS: Games with move lengths greater than 1:00:00 would break parse
• Add missing FICSLogin translation.
• New windows Phalanx build. It works better under win7, but has analysis polling issues
• OS X: pad out flag buttons in Header search
• base_open_failure was erroneously closing wrong base
• Windows Preview HTML for Reports is fixed

What is new in version 4.7:

• Tree: Add coloured bargraphs representing win/draw/loss (and remove the old tree graph)
• Tablebases: Make best tablebase moves clickable.
• Tablebases: tidy up config , main window and help items.
• FICs: Can now play and watch (observe) multiple games at the same time.
• FICS: Support loading old/interupted games for analysis (using 'smoves' command)
• FICs: Add an Abort button. Other minor fixes.
• Serious Game overhaul (though still has minor issues) Add pause, resume features and mate, game drawn dialogs.
• Computer Tournament: Add 'first engine only' feature for testing a single engine against others.
• Enable material difference display for game browser and fics observerd games
• Analysis: View engine logs from within Scid, and can also disable logging.
• Analysis no longer word wraps, and uses fixed font.
• Analysis: add a xboard/uci protocol column to the engine list.
• Include updates to SCID's spellchk.c, improving the ELO add-ratings feature.
• Update spelling.ssp file to Jan 2012, and include with windows
• Player info: clicking FIDE ID opens relevant url.
• New feature: 'Search-Filter to Last Move'. All filter games will load at the last move (end of game).
• Refine the Calculation of Variation (Stoyko Exercise) feature and Help.
• Toolbar has a 'book window' icon.
• Tweak PGN context menu: reorder the Strip/Delete move items.
• Gamelist: replace the Negate button with a Select button.
• Tree: Include a patch for embedding the Best Games into the Tree window.
• Analysis: Revert Lock engine changes. Previously, lock engine would also start Trial Mode
• Bugfixes:
• Importing PGN, check that Promotion Moves are long enough (otherwise can segfault).
• Document CCRL pgn round name problem, and handle errors better when Name limits hit.
• FICS: remove non-ascii chars from commands if using timeseal.
• Gamelist: To display unusual characters, convert to unicode before displaying games.
• Sync html bitmaps with SCID.
• Book: Only do the second book move lookup if we have too. (slight performance boost)
• EPD: Quick fix for epd analysis annotation bug..
• Hungarian, Swedish and Potugese Spanish were broken if Piece translation enabled (which was default). Fixed.
• Fix up Tacgame score-isn't-updated bug

What is new in version 4.5:

• The main new features are Chess Figurines in the PGN window and an updated computer tournament with per-game time control, clocks, and adjudication buttons.
• Otherwise, the Mac OS X package has been significantly improved, and there are bugfixes and a few little touches like typing "OO" for castling.
• The Game List remembers its view when switching between bases.

What is new in version 4.3:

• Clickable Variation arrows
• Paste Variation feature
• Database Switcher has been moved to the Gamelist Widget (and has some new icons)
• Gamelist can now perform logical ANDs in the search widget using "+", and include the date
• Gamelist now has remove-above and remove-below buttons.
• FICs improvements, including a ping feature to indicate network health (*nix only), and player communications are saved as PGN comments.
• FICs bug-fix: don't automatically accept rematches
• FICs "Opponent Info" button
• New Toolbar buttons: "Load First Game" , "Load Last Game"
• Bookmark Widget has been overhauled
• Analysis Engine's move history doesn't get spammed by "Mate in 1" (for eg) messages
• An engine can now be run in the Statusbar
• Allow engines to be reordered
• Simplify the Bestgames Widget : Remove the PGN pane, nice-ify the widget, and enable graph and best widgets to remember size.
• Several interface speed-ups from Fulvio
• Other SCID C++ changes from Gerd and Fulvio, including "Don't decode games when copying games"
• Some Tree Search optimisations from SCID
• Sort by number of Variations and Comments from Gerd
• Help Widget has a search entrybox
• Help Widget font size (and Pgn Window) can be easily increased by control+wheelmouse
• When pasting FEN directly, do a castling sanity check.
• Bugfix: When user starts scidvspc for the first time, clipbase is left closed
• Browser widget has a nicer button bar, and windows wheel-mouse bindings
• Overhaul the Edit Menus
• Numerous GUI fixes
• Revert PlayerInfo to old format, but add a "Won Drawn Lost" header.
• Tweak crosstable knock-out format

What is new in version 4.1:

• Quite a few FICs tweaks, including new help pages and D.O.S. attack fixes
• Numerous Gamelist improvements (see below)
• Tree widget improvements: next move is highlighted, main filter is now independant of Tree filter, wheel mouse bindings.
• Tactics feature fixed up: Renamed "Puzzle" , and Problem Solutions can now be browsed in-game
• Analysis window "add variation" now *appends* variations if at var end
• Comment Editor has undo and redo bindings
• Main board grid colour can be changed
• Setup board can rotate and flip the board
• Clicking on moves in the gameinfo area shows Comment Editor
• Better window raising/focusing
• Kill analysis window after batch annotations
• New marble tile theme and colour themes
• Some menu re-ordering
• Recent Files menu is basename only
• Remove Control+V game paste binding .... too dangerous
• Further refinements of Switcher widget and Icons
• ttk comboboxes are no longer grey
• Analysis widget scrolling will pause to allow backwards review
• Splash widget changes, and remove pop-up for missing Bases and Book directories
• Rewritten Help items
• Gamelist improvements:
• Field order rearranged
• Columns now sort in both directions, with arrow depicting direction
• Deleting items works better
• Can be sorted by ELO
• Draws sorted alongside no-result
• Delete and Compact buttons disable better
• Bugfixes -
• Twinchecker PGN text diff-ing was sometimes broken
• Phalanx observes tournament feature time control
• Fix "Show Suggested Move" feature
• Fix occasionaly issue with erroneously selecting squares, then being unable to reselect them
• Ignore crafty's resignations which caused X-window flash events
• No context menu if dragging a piece
• RobboLito (and others ?) had uppercase piece promotion which occasionally broke
• "Show Suggested Move" was broken
• Gamelist sometimes left off the last or first item
• Widget tidies -
• Analysis engine config widget
• Maintenance tweaks
• Game save widget made better
• Parent Date widget
• Delete twins
• Database Switcher changes, including new icons
• Finder now has three columns (and other changes)
• Player finder + Tournament Finder sub-widgets alligned
• Statistics window restructured

What is new in version 4.0:

• Computer Chess tournament feature
• The Gamelist widget has been rewritten to work with huge databases. Other new features include a case insensitive search, deleted items are greyed out, and there's a "Compact" button to empty trash with.
• Add a background colour option that applies to many text widgets, including gameinfo, pgn window and help window
• Restructured the analysis widgets, putting toolbar on top, tiny board at bottom, tweaking toolbar icons and reparenting analysis died error dialog
• Update the book and book-tuning windows (untested, from SCID)
• Add a new logo, and some wm title tweaks
• Board Screenshot feature (Control+F12)
• Bind mouse wheel to move progression (and widget resize) for the little browser windows
• Change all comboboxes to ttk::combobox
• Allow xboard lowercase promotion moves (eg while g7g8Q always worked, g7g8q previously failed)
• Enable hovering over toolbar help pop-ups
• Fix up analysis widget "lock to position" feature
• All analysis windows can now use annotation, and autoplay feature
• Bind F4 to start another analysis window
• Various C fixes from SCID
• Sync the tools::connect-hardware feature with SCID (untested)
• When using the setup board widget, do a sanity check about the FEN's castling field
• Some minor version fixes anticipating tcl8.6
• Small bugfix: variation pop-up could previously throw errors if moving through movs fast
• F1 *toggles* help window
• Remove space-only lines from project - they mess up vim's paragraph traversal feature
• Fics "withdraws offer" fix
• Toolbar icons tweak
• Allow databses to have "." in their name
• Tactical Game stores game result
• Set Game Info widget includes Site field
• Small "update idletasks" in main.tcl improves main board responsiveness
• Fix up the history limit of combobox-es (especially the setup board FEN combo)
• UCI kludges for Prodeo and Rybka from SCID (untested)
• Turn off craftys egtb (end game tablebook) for the analysis widget
• Comment editor bugfix - unbind left/right from main board
• Fix for matsig.cpp overflow (unapplied? , untested)
• Key binding for first/last game is now Control+Home/End instead of Control+Shift+Up/Down
• Perform a db refresh after importing PGN file(s)

What is new in version 3.6.26.9:

• Added a random pawns feature to tacgame
• Added magnetic chess pieces
• _Some_ tcl speed optimisations to the main board and material board (and htext.tcl)
• Move the crosstable menu item from "tools" to "windows"
• Centralise procedures called when switching between DBs
• Crosstable: make options persistant, tweak menus, fix html export blank fields
• Crosstable: allow spelling.ssp to match initalized christian names, include a Font button, fix parenting
• Change the toplevel "wm title" to show "White v. Black database]"
• Fics: Make a new Received Offers dialog which allows for proper handling of multiple challenges
• Fics: Tweak the Make Offer dialog
• Fics: update help files, and add a Font button
• Fics: some fixes from SCID
• Move the side-to-move indicator to left of main board
• Make font dialogs resizable, add a "default" feature, a new "fixed" default, and small overhaul (hard work!)
• (Add a "Font" button to the help and crosstable widgets)
• Fix focus issues with the Set Game Info widget
• Reorganise Scid start-up (includes reading font info  before  drawing splash widget, removing unused old logo and start-up checks)
• Remove quite a few "-background white" statements from all over (to allow for custom coloured backgrounds in future)
• Fix up padding issues with the analysis widget's small text widget
• Player Info got a fair bit of tweaking - nicer info display (spellchk.cpp, tkscid.cpp) with full country names, and tcl widget tweaked too
• Upgrade to toga 131
• Remove pocket and help directories
• Changed a heap of menus (for example) PGN::File is now PGN::PGN, to avoid confusion with the Scid::File menu
• Player Report configuration widget reniced.
• Menu name and key-bindings changes for PGN and FEN import
• Swapped key bindings for "Goto Move Number" (now ctrl+g) and "Goto Game Number" (now ctrl+u)
• Include the highlight previous move feature from SCID (and add a context menu)
• (Promise to) fix the Gamelist widget , and add a Comp vs Comp feature for next release

What is new in version 3.6.26.8:

• Just lots of help menu nice-ities i've added at the last minute.

Requirements:

• Tcl/Tk