Introduction
Shane's Chess Information Database is a powerful Chess Toolkit, with which one can create huge chess databases, run engine analysis, or play casual games against the computer or online with the Free Internet Chess Server. It was originally written by Shane Hudson , and has received strong contribution from Pascal Georges and others.
Scid vs. PC is a usability and bug-fix fork of Scid with some new features. The project is authored by Stevenaaus, and has been extensively tested. For more screenshots, visit the Gallery.
2. Features
See changes for a comprehensive changelog, or the gallery for some screenshots..
New and Improved Features
- Computer Tournaments.
- Rewritten Gamelist widget, with the incorporated Database Switcher.
- Improved Computer Game and FICs features.
- Clickable Variation Arrows, and Paste Variation feature.
- Improved Undo and Redo.
- Tri-coloured Tree Bar-Graphs alongside statistics.
- PGN can be shown as chess figurines/fonts.
- Ratings Graph can show multiple players.
- Book tuning Remove Move feature.
- Separate board sections are hideable via right-click.
- A redone Button Bar with improved look and feel.
- Clickable Tablebase moves.
- Restructured Analysis Engines. The function hotkeys can be set explicitly, Engine 1 can be docked into the Status Bar, and any number of engines may run at one time. Engine Annotation has also been rewritten, Engine Logs are viewable.
- The Chessboard/Pieces options have been totally overhauled. There are some new colour and tile themes, and great piece sets available if the optional TkImg package is installed.
- The Setup Start Board has many fixes and improvements.
- The Help index is now meaningful to new users, with links to the game's main features.
- Countless big-fixes.
Missing Features
- SCID's 4.4 had a powerful filter sorting capability, but it is not stable.
- Some language translations need volunteers and updating.
3. Downloads
source: scid_vs_pc-4.9.1.tgz
windows: Scid vs PC-4.9.1.exe win64 Scid vs PC-4.9.1.x64.exe
mac: ScidvsMac-4.9.1.dmg
The latest code is available from subversion:
svn co https://scidvspc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/scidvspc
4. Installation
Linux , FreeBSD
Scid vs. PC requires Tcl/Tk 8.5 or 8.6. Tcl/Tk 8.5.10 has nasty bugs and should be avoided.
Most Unices should have Tcl/Tk installed by default. To verify this, look for a command named wish or wish8.5. To enable support for extra chess pieces (such as Berlin), you may need to install TkImg. Then, installing from source:
tar -xzf scid_vs_pc-4.9.1.tgz cd scid_vs_pc-4.9.1 configure make install scid
It is also possible to install Scid vs. PC into /usr, instead of the normal /usr/local.
This allows for parallel installation with mainline Scid, and is done by: ./configure BINDIR=/usr/bin/ SHAREDIR=/usr/share/scid/
Scid's multi-language support can cause problems. Chinese (and other) users should use: ./configure LANGUAGES=""
Windows
Windows installation simply requires downloading the executable, and following the prompts.
The configuration files, including the chess engine list, are stored in the Scid vs PC\bin\config directory, and may be copied over from old versions to make upgrading easier. On Windows 7, these files are mirrored in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Scid vs PC
Mac OS X
The ScidvsMac-4.9 app in the downloads section should include everything you need. Simply drag and drop the App into /Applications (or similar).
Note: Users upgrading may have to remove (or edit) $HOME/.scidvspc/config/engines.dat
OS X has a poor implementation of Tcl, and docked mode has bugs (some windows work better after being moved around, keyboard shortcuts are very hit and miss). These issues should be fixed with a point release sometime in the future.
To compile from source - once you have XCode installed - please read ScidvsMac-HowTo.rtfd in the source tarball.
OS X's Cocoa port of Wish is broken, with little chance of repair. Scid vs PC ships with a custom Carbon build of Wish, which is solid but does have problems with the Docked Windows feature.
5. News
April, 2013
Finally have a docked windows feature. It's a damn complicated thing, but i am fond of it.
September, 2012
I've been messing with OS X and noticed an issue with the 4.8 build - which was made on Snow Leopard. Luckily i've kepy my OS X 10.5 around, and have made a new build with it (which also includes PPC support). Macs are lovely things .... when they work.
March, 2012
Big effort by Gregor to write Drag and Drop support for Scidb and ScidvsPC ! Thanks. FICS is looking great too.
February 14, 2012
4.7 is out and includes tree bar-graphs, and the ability to observe multiple games in FICS.
September 29, 2011
Jiri Pavlovsky has made a windows installer. It's a nice piece of software :) Big thank-you. And we now have undo and redo features.
July 8, 2011
Thanks to Gilles for the web page restructure and OS X testing. Gregor Cramer http://scidb.sf.net has contributed a PGN figurine feature.
April 19, 2011
A belated thanks to Lee from Sourceforge for this article.
December 10, 2010
Sicd vs. PC 4.2 includes support for Scid's si4 db format.
July 3, 2010
For the tenth release I've adopted verison number 4.0 . It includes a new Computer Tournament feature (thanks to some UCI snippets from Fulvio) and the Gamelist Widget is finally up-to-speed for large databases.
April 19, 2010
Release 3.6.26.9 includes a Fics accept/decline offers widget.
December 20, 2009
Thanks to Dorothy for making me a Mac DMG package with this release , 3.6.26.8.
August 16, 2009
With 3.6.26.6 I've fixed Phalanx's illegal castling. There is also changes to the Setup board and Toolbar configuration widgets.
July 17, 2009
3.6.26.5 - New Gamelist widget, and re-fashioned main buttons. Project's looking quite solid :->
June 23, 2009
The monkey on my back has really been having a good time. This release includes changes to the Gameinfo, Comment Editor, and Board Style widgets, some new chess pieces, colour schemes and tiles. Thanks to Michal and Alex for feedback.
June 4, 2009
Well, the html is up, and i've got a couple of files in the downloads section. My project is fairly modest fork of Scid ... just rewriting Tk widgets when i get the urge.
6. Miscellaneous
6.1 docked windows
Docked Windows allows one to arrange many of Scid's sub-windows as tiles and tabs in a single toplevel. Rearranging of windows takes a little practice, but there are two methods. Grabbing the windows tab , one can drag and drop them over other window's tabs. Alternatively, right-clicking on the tab displays a menu from where one can dislodge them relative to the current window. Right-clicking the main board shows a menu for hiding various parts of the window.
There are a few associated options for this feature in Options->Windows. Deselecting "Dock Windows" will prompt one to exit and when restarted, the docked windows feature will be disabled.
However, it does have a few issues:
- Tcl/Tk 8.6.0 may have bugs.
- Key bindings (especially menus) can be hit and miss.
- Windows undocked from within docking mode can have glitches. Mainly: drag and drop game copies in the switcher don't work.
- OS X support is not good.
In the event of problems, start the program with the "-nodock" command-line option to disable docking.
6.2 how to play
- Playing against the Computer
The main Computer vs. Player feature is accessed from Play->Computer. Here you'll find options to play against Phalanx (a flexible computer opponent whose skill you can select), or any installed UCI engine.
- Playing on the Internet
Playing on the Internet is done via the the Play->Internet menu item. I recommend visiting the Fics website to create a user account, but it is also possible to play anonymously. To start a game, press the Login as Guest button, then watch the available games as they are announced in the console. Enter play [game number] to accept a game challenge.
There is more information about the Fics and Computer Game features in the online documentation.
6.3 known issues
- Tcl/Tk-8.5.10 is buggy. Tcl/Tk-8.6.0 also is immature, but mostly works.
- OS X docked mode has multiple issues due to it's poor Tcl/Tk.
- Chinese Language Support. Scid's multilanguage support is broken
for some countries. The work around involves compiling from source, using:
./configure LANGUAGES=""
Alternatively, remove all lines between "### deutsch.tcl" and "# end of russian.tcl" in the scid.gui file. - Focus Issues. Kde users can allow Tcl apps to properly raise themselves by configuring desktop > window behavior > advanced > focus stealing prevention set to "none"
6.4 bugs
- See the known issues about Tcl/Tk (above).
- Importing huge PGN archives can sometimes fail. The command line utility pgnscid is a more reliable way to create large databases from pgn. Typing "pgnscid somefile.pgn" creates a new database "somefile.si4".
- Using the '+' operator and clicking on 'Find' in the gamelist widget can be very slow. The code needs to be moved from gamelist.tcl to tkscid.cpp.
- Windows only:
- Using "ALT+F"... etc key bindings to access the menus is badly broke. This is a Tcl/Tk issue.
- Window focus/raise issues, another Tcl/Tk issue.
6.5 thanks
Thanks to Gregor Cramer for the PGN figurines and Drag and Drop features, and technical support.
For Gilles and Dorothy for OS X packages,
To Pascal Georges for his many technical contributions.
Fulvio and Gerd for their much appreciated contributions to Scid.
Sourceforge.net for their great hosting,
and of course Shane Hudson, and the authors of Tcl/Tk
6.6 scid's history
Scid is a huge project, with an interesting history. Originally authored by Shane Hudson from New Zealand, it combined the power of Tk's GUI and the speed of C, to produce a free Chess Database application with Opening Reports, Tree Analysis, and Tablebase support. It gained quite some attention, as it was arguably the first project of it's kind; but after writing over a hundred thousand lines of code, in 2004 development stopped. Shane never contributed to Scid again. He was generally reported to be seriously ill, and today has little if no contact with the current Scid community.
Two new versions of Scid appeared around 2006. The first was ChessDB authored by Dr. David Kirby. With some good documentation and the ability to automatically download games from several web portals, it became popular. But at the same time Pascal Georges from France was making strong technical improvements to Scid. Frustrated with Scid's dormancy, and because of disagreements with ChessDB's author, Pascal released his own tree, Scid-pg, which included UCI support and numerous Player versus Computer features.
But subtley, and with some controversy, he began to adopt the name Scid as his own. Some people objected, especially Dr. Kirby, with whom a flame war began, but Pascal's efforts to gain ownership of the Sourceforge Scid project eventually succeeded.
Under Pascal, and with the help of numerous contributors, Scid again strode forward. Pascal wrote a Tree Mask feature, and in 2009 he upgraded the database format to si4, all the time making speed and technical improvements to the neglect of the interface. Very recently, Pascal has contributed less to the project, but it still thrives as a feature rich database application, with a strong community headed by a core group of programmers.
But along the way, there exist other Scid projects. Chessx, originally by Michal Rudolf from Germany, is a rewrite of Scid using the powerful libQT API, popularized by KDE-4. Originally called Newscid, Chessx still grows, but with a much smaller feature set, and lesser popularity than Scid.
Scid vs. PC (by Steven Atkinson from Australia) began around mid 2009. Forked from Scid-3.6.26, it began as an effort to tidy Shane's frenetic code base, improve the user interface , and add polish to Scid's rich feature set; but it is now probably the most mature fork. Development of mainline SCID continues, but has problems.
Another project is reaching its initial public release. Scidb, by Gregor Cramer from Germany, is a total rewrite of Scid. It thoroughly utilizes C++ and a heavily customized Tk interface, and includes Chessbase database support and Chess960/other variants among it's features.
7. Changes
Scid vs. PC 4.9.1
- Fix promotion bug in non-docked mode
- Small pictures allign top/bottom in game info
- Clickable crosstable columns
- Make an undo point with Setup Board, and disable undo for Trial mode
- Add Tournament lookup to Player Info window
- PGN import window was not getting mapped
Scid vs. PC 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
- 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
Bugfixes
Scid vs. PC 4.8
-
General
- Drag and Drop file open(s) on Windows and Unix
- Custom background images (jpegs, gifs and pngs)
- Random sort pgn feature.
- Crosstable now have +/-/= subtotals
- (and Player Stats format changed from +/=/- to +/-/=).
- General PGN search has ignore case option
- Board Search gets it's combobox updated when DBs are opened and closed.
- Save game before PGN Import
- Save game: enable the use of 'prev game tags' for existing games. This allows easy addition of the same tags to consecutive existing games.
- Remove the 'Scid: ' prefix from several window titles
- Update some translations
- Show Linux version/distro in the startup window.
- Add a patch to make toolbar buttons raise only (instead of toggle open/shut)
- Add a patch for Chess960 support (from Ben Hague). Unfinished
- UCI: properly handle UCI buttons. Previously they were invoked at every engine restart.
- Right clicking 'Add Var' button adds Engine Score comment only.
- Replace ponder on/off with hard/easy for xboard engines
- Super quick engine infos can happen before Scid's PV is inited properly. So we have to default to PV = 1
- Allow xboard engines to use lowercase 'b' for bishop promotion (eg a7b8b)
- Don't send an erroneous 'isready' (with 'uci') to quiet analysis engines
- Right clicking the widget allows to disable line wrapping
- Don't add a line to analysis history if moves are null
- Move ECO stats to the end of line.
- Several Mask refinements - notably Searches are much more readable and previously clicking on searched lines didn't work
- Fix up minor bugs about castling moves (OO, O-O, O-O-O)
- Computer Tournament Book feature
- Dont' kill tournament if engine crashes.
- Only pack the first 10 engine combos (which allows for big tournaments)
- Fix up Xboard time/move command order. Xboard engines should behave much better.
- Various other tweaks
- Show altered games in red.
- Control-wheelmouse scrolls up/down one page.
- Switcher now has text on two lines (if icons are shown).
- Digital clocks now (optionally) on the main board
- Better integration of FICS "examine" and "observe" features
- FICS has it's own options menu
- bind F9 to xtell instead of tell.
- Change the move.wav sound from tick-tock to a short click.
- Filter graph bugfix
- Material Search properly shows the little buttons
- Copy and Paste text from disabled OSX text widgets (engines, help, gameinfo)
- Buttons 2 and 3 are swapped around
- Work arounds for wish 8.5.12 and 8.5.8 issues
- Analysis logs can badly break autoscroll, so use normal frames and scrollbars.
- Handle PGN parsing of unspecified promotions (b8 becomes b8=Q , for eg).
Analysis
Tree
Computer Tournament
Gamelist
FICS
OS X
General Bugs
Scid vs. PC 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
- 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
Bugfixes
Scid vs. PC 4.6
- Undo and Redo features (partly from SCID)
- Microsoft Windows has a proper installer
- Always loads games at the correct game ply when using the tree and searches.
- Ratings graph can show multiple players (and there's a minimum ELO feature)
- Computer Tournament: Improvements for both Xboard and UCI engines, and implement the 50 move draw rule.
- Auto-promote feature for FICs
- Book tuning 'Remove move' feature
- Autoraise button raises all windows
- Annotation improvements, and it is now possible to score All moves while only annotating Blunders.
- Known aliases Biographical data is shown in the player information window
- The player info widget has buttons enabling quick player renames and look-up.
- 'Read-Only' context menu to the Database Switcher, and Read-Only bases are greyed out.
- Fix bug in the opening/theory table
- Remember game position when stripping comments and variations from PGN
- Change analysis colors for MultiPV to black/grey instead of blue/black.
- New 'Search in (other) Database' feature to the board search (from SCID)
- Variation/Mainline arrows can have custom colours.
- Crosstable can (optionally) show 3 points for a win
- Fix sc_remote (which allows games to be opened in an already running Scid vs PC)
- Phalanx tacgame bug-fixes (play brainy, and stop after the correct amount of time)
- Tweak the best games widget (make fields line-up)
- When handling Import PGN errors, show the game numbers as well as the line in file.
- Catch a nasty wish8.5.10 bug with the gamelist (Wish-8.5.10 should be avoided)
- Remove the broken integer field validation and replace it with something that allows backspace to work.
- Bind Control-Tab to 'switch to next base', and Control-(quoteleft) to 'switch to clipbase'
- Fix a couple of corner cases concerning dates and searches.
- Analysis widget : small speed improvements , icon changes and bug-fixes
- Add a help item for Maintenance 'Check Games' feature.
- Swap around the 'Next Move' and 'Event' game-information lines.
- New documentation about making Polyglot books.
- Make the player Report config widget a bit easier to use.
- Catch a nasty wish8.5.10 bug with the gamelist (Wish-8.5.10 should be avoided)
- New OS X HowTo
- Crosstable bugfix: the 'show white first' feature didn't work for two match rounds.
- Update 'Tips'
- Clarify Scid's maximum number of games
- Update Spanish and Polish translations
- Update FICs , PGN and Menu language translations
Scid vs. PC 4.5
PGN Window:
- PGN chess font support (but font installation on Windows isn't great)
- Per-game time control
- Clock widgets for remaining time
- Manual adjudication buttons, and a Restart button
- Game List remembers it's view when switching between bases
- Game Browser has new buttons and functionality
- Tournament Finder is more readable
- Restore PGN scrollbar (pgn option)
- Phalanx now reads enpassant and 50 move field from FEN (thanks Bernhard Prümmer
- FICs console fg and bg colours are now configurable
- Name Editor tidy up and documentation review
- Player Info: add a 'Refine Filter' result group
- Typing 'OO' castles (previously only 'OK','OQ')
- Mask Search widget fixes
- Annotation: Dont add nags when annotating score. Don't repeat previous nag if annotating all moves
- Crosstable shows current game in green
- Use translations for Game List column titles (if available)
- Add a 'Game Delete' menu
- Improve ./configure and Makefile, and CC FLAGS are propagated to all targets
- Game Save autocomplete now uses mouse instead of clumsy keyboard bindings
- Restrict Game List sort to valid columns, and add a 'confirm sort' widget for bases > 200000 games
- Windows Crosstable transparency glitch is fixed
- Fix wheelmouse support in a few places
- Add a 'make-scidgui.bat' hack for assembling a new 'scid.gui' from subversion
- Computer Tournament buttons padding fixed
- Make an OS X app with a working ;> version of Tcl (thanks Gilles)
- Many OS X wheelmouse and graphical fixes
- Null move fixes including - analysis engines can append variations
- Tree training feature fixes
- Show Progressbar for loading bases with a dot (.) in their name
- If Scid crashes, Game List could be left with zero size
- PGN middle-click move preview feature fixed for variations
- PGN text tabstops are now dynamic to allow for correct column allignment in column mode
- Remember position of custom ecoFile if loaded
- Change the second book slot to avoid conflict with Annotation feature
- Catch unmatched braces in gamelist values
- Fix 'Paste FEN' castling sanity check
- Browser previously highlighted Next move instead of Current move
- Fix scid.eco unicode bug
- Remove 'newlines' from Mask Search results
- When addAnalysisVariation fails due to bad moves, don't move back N moves
- Theory table incorrectly started from start position
Scid vs. PC 4.4.1
- Fix nasty flicker bug when board is flipped
- Fix fics bug that graph sometimes doesn't stop when new game starts
- Add Burnett chess pieces
Scid vs. PC 4.4
- Implement SCID's interruptable tree processing
- Implement SCID's custom flags
- Gamelist is much faster for big databases
- Add widgets to the gamelist for manipulating flags and browsing first/last/next/previous games
- Opening Book and Book Tuning overhaul - allow two books to be opened with side-by-side sorting, and various interface improvements
- Overhaul Annotate widget - allow choice of scores/variation/both and remember annotation options
- Crosstable sort by Country feature
- Update Fics to allow for different Port/IP Address (using SCID code)
- Graph changes - remember widget settings, change colours+dot size, fix up half-move bug and a title misallignment, add 2010 decade
- Fix up the global grab for progressWindow (opening databases)
- Add "Half moves" (moves since capture or pawn move) to setup board
- ECO Browser changes - add "update" and "up" buttons, when clicking on "Start ECO" open browser at top level, make statistics more readable
- Add the "Last Move Color" to the main board colours widget
- Restructure "Tools" menu
- Icons - remove the large gameinfo and togglemenu buttons, add a "comment editor" icon to the toolbar and tidy up various icons
- Busy cursor when sorting database via Gamelist column click
- For OS X (esp. single button mice) - bind to context menu for main window and pgn window
- Make the 'paste variation' feature work a bit better at var/game end
- Make variation popup remember it's location instead of being centered
- Add "Read-only" button to maintenance window.
- A nice PGN/htext performance tweak that smooths out large game edits
- When using "-fast", perform fast database opens also. Otherwise, update the progressbar to show "Calculating name frequencies"(todo?)
- Ubuntu 11 have put libX11.so somewhere stupid. Update configure script
- Paste FEN bug involving fen validation.
- Fix promotion bug involving busy CPU and missed grab
- Fix off-screen window placement on windows
- On Macs, dont place the window at top of screen, as it's then stuck under the main menubar
- Make the game save dialog center and resize properly
- Fix up file loading (and bookmarks) of DBs with dots (.) in their name
- Statusbar shows correct value after Crosstable update
Scid vs. PC 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
Scid vs. PC 4.2
- New si4 database support
- Include tree and mask improvements from Scid (excepting Fulvio's delayed tree code, which has issues)
- Overhaul right-click menu and allow toolbar / menubar / statusbar to be hidden
- Allow tournament games to start from current position
- Easier 64 bit compilation
- Include Scid's correspondence feature
- Make analysis widget info properly hideable, and tweak buttons
- Tweak game save forms
- A couple of Mac fixes, including the broken gamelist widget (bad!)
- Restructure game info widget - Player names are more prominent, Length field added, Colors made consistent
- Reincluded Merida2 pieces
- Remove Repertoire editor (same functionality via Tree Masks)
- New Finder rename fucntion
- PGN indentation fix (especially for comments)
- Work around for batch annotation bug (still under dev by Joost)
- Header search widget tidy
- New icon
Scid vs. PC 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
Scid vs. PC 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)
Scid vs. PC 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
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.8
- The Fics widgets have been redone, including buttons, the graph and labels, config windows, and console tweaks
- Made a few friendly help menus, as well as adding a "Forward" button to the help interface
- Fixed up the "Show Material" widget. It can now be flipped and resized, and draws pieces either side of halfway according to colour
- The main board area has a modest new right click menu for configuring a few Game Info items
- Configure Informant Values widget reniced
- Tacgame now has a stalemate dialog
- Fics now show a warning when game board is out of sync
- A few fixes from Scid; not duplicating variations unnecessarily; Fics socket fixes; Uci responsiveness at game end
- The analysis engines now support RobboLito, and an unlimited number of engines
- The File::Open menus have had quite a bit of debugging
- Some ne tile themes
- The pause mechanism for tacgame has be restructured to allow for use with Fics too
- Some optimisations to the oft used tcl in htext.tcl
- The piece and size menus in the Options widget have been replaced by text buttons
- Bugfixes:
- A hack to fix wayward comments (Scid)
- Don't let fischer chess (try to) castle
- Don't raise all windows with double click... (Very bad for Fics blitz)
- Minor PGN window/comment strip fix
- Some widget reparenting
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.7
- Include a mac configuration patch
- Back out broken Fics autoflag code
- Fix sometime-issue with material widget outline
- Small change to Tacgame about getMyPlayerName
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.6
- The Setup Board widget now shows tiles (when the main board uses tiles) and has improved functionality. It also properly inits the move number, enpassant + castling combos, and side to move radiobuttons.
- Fixed phalanx's illegal castling, and sorted out issues with it's opening book and the analysis window
- Replaced the hardly used side-to-move and coords buttons with toggle-menu, toggle-gameinfo buttons (Removing the redundant gameinfo right-click menu)
- Fixed up the toolbar cofniguration widget, and re-did a few little images
- Variation pop-ups now center over the main window, and enable KeyPress-1, KeyPress-2, etc bindings
- Added a changelog (help) widget
- Allow up to five analysis engines to run simultaneously
- Fix the MyPlayerNames widget. (No autoscrollframe, no grab (interfered with Help))
- Add MyPlayerName info to Tacgame
- Tacgame show a modest checkmate widget when game is over (for the first time)
- A few menu/hint fixes in menu.tcl, and a new tile theme
- Help window maintenance, including proper positioning, and removing the awful yellow highlighting
- Speed optimisations for updating main board
- Bug fix for sometime issue with gamelist widget initialisation (thanks Alex)
- De-stupidify Save Game dialog (::game::ConfirmDiscard2)
- Fix up Paste Clipboard widget a little
- Reorder the Options->Chessboard menus a little, giving MyPlayerNames its own entry
- Several configuration windows appear centered over main window
- Add Control-m binding for toggling the menubar
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.5
- Revamped the main button bar, making it a little larger too.
- Fixed installation issues with tacgame/toga/phalanx on unix systems
- Restructured workings of the Analysis widget, - the F2 and F3 key bindings can now be set explicitly.
- More functionality added to the gamelist widget.
- Re-sampled the Alpha bitmaps (thanks to Chessdb), and added support for 75 pixel bitmaps
- Quick fixes for the repetitive nature of the "Draw" and "I Resign" messages from tacgame.
- Other minor changes: Control-WheelMouse == Sizeup/Sizedown, Variation buttons swap position, Spellcheck installation fix.
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.4
- New Gamelist widget. It's much more powerful than the old one, but is not quite yet feature complete.
- Many changes to the Gameinfo widget,
- , including a new "Set Game Information" widget.
- Stop game from crashing with languages other than English.
- Window placement is now relative the main window, rather than absolute +x+y
- The Options->Chessboard menu now also includes the pieces menus
- The 3 line PGN header is now colour
- Home directory is now $HOME/.scidvspc (instead of $HOME/.scid).
- Pawn promotion dialog size now corresponds to board size, and overlays promoted pawn.
- Control-I toggles gameinfo panel. Control-b toggles Options->Chessboard widget, Control-L toggles gamelist widget.
- Other minor changes to fics, -O2, "exec tkscid" correctness, font and menu tweaks
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.3
- Replaced most all of the old colour schemes and tiles.
- New Usual and Maya pieces.
- Rewrote (again) the option->chessboard->board_style widget. Changes are now made dynamically to the main board.
- Tweaked the pgn save menu, included a "Save Pgn" menu item in the "File" menu, and other pgn window bindings.
- Added a Fics autoflag option (for logging in as guest), and other Fics tweaks.
- Don't allow null entry of "Elo" field in analysis engine customisation.
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.2
- Game info panel restructured ;>
- New Berlin, Spatial chess pieces
- Fics and Fischer chess changes
- Overhauled comment editor widget, including key bindings
- More tacgame bug-fixes.
- Removed the right_click->take_back_move... This is just too dangerous for Fics (which really gets stuffed up). Mouse wheel bindings remain.
- Fixed more bugs in the tactical game feature.
- Allow the main window to use wish-8.5 native fullscreen mode.
- Bug fixed the scidvspc setup board.
- Little Fischer chess tweaks and bishop setup fixed.
- Gave the show_material canvas a little more space
Scid vs. PC 3.6.26.1
- Overhauling the tactical game feature.
- including a Fischer chess option.
- Overhauling the tools->analysis widget.
- Some re-organization of menu widgets, including tear-off menus.
- Rewritten board style widget.
- Fix parenting of some pop-ups, including the splash widget.
- Clock widgets placed side-by-side.
- Remember fics widget size.
- Last move displayed in bold.
todo
- Language updates (volunteers welcome).
- Pin down all filter inaccuracies.
8. Contact
Stevenaaus (email)
is a uni graduate in math and computer science,
who programs as a hobby in tcl/tk, bash and C.
He lives and works in rural australia, and enjoys getting beat by Acconcio on the Free Internet Chess Server.
Scid vs. PC mailing list archive, subscribe.
9. Documentation
This online documentation is generated from Scid vs. PC's help files.
http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/doc/Contents.htm