Most Scid Database maintenance can be done from the
Operations include - using Delete (and other Game Flags), Spellcheck Names, Compact and Sort databases, and delete PGN Tags, Comments and Variations.
Flags, Compaction and Sorting features are documented separately.
When you have identified twins, it is good practice to confirm they have been correctly marked. Selecting "Set filter to twins to be deleted" allows easy perusal through the Twin Game Checker window (which automatically appears). Here, tag differences are highlighted, and Scid vs. PC shows a inline comparison of game variations and comments.
Use the arrow buttons (or left,right keys) to progress through the games, "1", "2" and "t" keys to toggle the Delete fields, "u" to undelete both games, "U" to undelete all games, and "s" to share tags. NB - to actually delete games, you must compact the database.
Scid vs PC also enables a few new clickables. The "Game N" button allows one to load either game (NB left and right may become reversed), and the "Games in Tournament" bars will show a crosstable for the tournament minus any deleted games.
The
Each unique name is only stored once in the name file, so changing a name actually changes all occurrences of it. Similarly, some names in the name file may not actually be in use. To remove such names, perform a namebase compaction.
Simple TCL Pattern Matching (using * ? \ [ ] characters) may be used instead of exact Name matches for some fields. Please use with caution. A single asterisk (which matches any name, including empty ones) is not available for Player or Rating edits. Additionally, only '*' will match Date fields.
Date and Eventdate fields must be of the form YYYY.MM.DD (year, month, day). A single '?' or '*' will match blank fields. Eventdates cannot exist without a valid Date entry, and must also be within 3 years of this Date.
Please take care when using the Name Editor. Changes are not undoable if the new name already exists. There is also a safety mechanism - Using '*' is not allowed with 'All games in database'.
The spellcheck file spelling.ssp contains information about Player Names, Titles, Birth & Death dates, and Country(s) of origin. Please use with caution. The names it contains may not be unique, and player initials may be incorrectly identified. It is also possible to substitute the larger ratings.ssp, which includes Elo ratings and FIDE Biographical data.
The file should be loaded on startup, or can be
Scid's Spell Checking feature is used to standardize Player, Event, Site and Round names throughout a database. To do so, a spelling file must be loaded.
When Spell Check is run, a list of proposed corrections is produced. These should be perused and edited before actually making the corrections on disk. The normal keyboard shortcuts for Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo and Redo apply.
The format of each correction is:
"Old Name" > > "New Name" (N) Birthdate--Deathdate
There should be no space before "Old Name", and "N" represents the number of games matching the original player name.
Note - because of our implementation, some poorly defined names (eg Events/White/Black) can be changed - eg those with a '"' in a name, and the missing space in "Kramnik,V" will get converted to "Kramnik, V"
One may discard any correction by deleting it, or adding a space or any other character at the start of the line. Player names with a surname only do not get corrected by default. Simliarly , Ambiguous name substitutions are not performed unless one manually removes the Ambiguous prefix from each line.
Name substitution will not occur in games dated before the Player's birth, or after death - unless the birth and death dates are removed from the translation.
For problematic PGN files, it may be necessary to use regexps and a word processor such as "vi".
For example - the first two examples remove four digit ELOs from player names. The last removes trailing spaces from all tags.
:%s/\(White .*\) *[[:digit:]][[:digit:]][[:digit:]][[:digit:]].*"/\1"/g
:%s/\(Black .*\) *[[:digit:]][[:digit:]][[:digit:]][[:digit:]].*"/\1"/g
:%s/ *"]$/"]/
The spelling file ratings.ssp contains ELO / Date information for rated players. The Add Elo Ratings button (in the Maintenance window) searches games and adds the appropriate ELO rating at the date of the game. There is also the option to overwrite existing ratings.
The spellcheck file provided with Scid does not contain the Elo rating information needed for this function. Instead, the larger ratings.ssp file should be used.
Ratings are not added to games with known aliases. One may wish to run the Spell Checker first, which changes names using player aliases.
When a database is opened, one may automatically load a particular game using the Maintenance Autoload game feature. Note: Because of design of si4 header, this number's upper limit is 16,777,214 (Approximately 2^(8*3)).
Use with caution. Bulk stripping Comments and Variations cannot be undone.
The PGN format includes a set of compulsory tags (such as White, Event and Date).
In Scid, these are handled by the Name Editor.
The
Features are: Finding, Filtering, Stripping, and Adding/Creating new tags (filter only).
Adding Extra Tags will quickly increase the size of Scid's Gamefile. Any changes will cause the tags to be totally rewritten, with space not reclaimed until the game file is compacted.
Please use with caution. Bulk editing game tags is a powerful feature, and generally not undoable. Additionally, there are other restrictions. Tag Names may not contain punctuation (except underscore), contain spaces, or match tags such as FEN, SetUp, WhiteElo and more.
This feature performs basic checks on every game/filter games.
Each Game
* Has index entry fetched
* Read from disk
* And is Decoded.
Any errors are reported.
The
In the rare case that a Scid Database is corrupted, one might try to repair it using Tools--> Maintenance--> Repair base. For this to work, the base in question must not be opened (which is not possible in most cases anyway). Scid will then try its best to get the database back in a consistent and usable state.