Any Chess GUI that reads ebooks (PDF)

bmp1974 · Post by **bmp1974** » Mon May 18, 2020 2:04 pm

Can anyone direct me to chess GUI that can read ebooks in windows for laptop/PC (PDF etc.)? I wonder why chessbase/Fritz have not thought about this.

hgm · Post by **hgm** » Mon May 18, 2020 8:18 pm

Reads them to do what? Amuse the engine by reading to it from Harry Potter?

Dann Corbit · Post by **Dann Corbit** » Mon May 18, 2020 8:25 pm

The problem with trying to read PDF is that chess boards in PDF files are images. You would need some sort of AI parser to turn chess boards into a usable structure.

Ovyron · Post by **Ovyron** » Mon May 18, 2020 9:58 pm

Sometimes the texts on the PDF are also images, so you couldn't really load a chess game from them to surf the moves in a GUI, and current methods for image to text aren't good enough for that (it'll get stuck in the middle of a game after confusing one character for another.)

Basically, this is one of the hardest things that could be implemented, after stuff like "speech to chess."

hgm · Post by **hgm** » Tue May 19, 2020 8:57 am

I think this still bypasses the main question. Even when you want to feed the GUI only Chess books, and the PDF is machine-readable (i.e. not an image), it will recognize a large number of positions, moves, entire games... What do you expect it to do with that info? And should it understand the accompanying text that discusses the moves?

If you just want the user to point out a game, and say 'analyze this game, move by move'... Well, that can already be done for machine-readable books, right? Just open the book in teh Acrobat reader, copy-paste the game you want analyzed into the GUI, press Analyze Game, et voila...

bmp1974 · Post by **bmp1974** » Tue May 19, 2020 4:39 pm

The main idea for the pdf to be opened alongside a board in GUI in a PC (windows) environment is to derive the same benefit that we get from using "Chess book study" app in andriod.

hgm · Post by **hgm** » Tue May 19, 2020 5:19 pm

Well, I don't know that app, but it is not obvious to me how that would be different from having Acrobat reader displaying a book alongside a GUI displaying a chess board, on a PC.

Dann Corbit · Post by **Dann Corbit** » Tue May 19, 2020 6:33 pm

I think what the OP was after was a chess database, which has games, positions, analysis, commentary, etc.
Basically Chessbase or ChessAssistant.

hgm · Post by **hgm** » Tue May 19, 2020 6:45 pm

So what should the database GUI do with the book?

Marek Soszynski · Post by **Marek Soszynski** » Tue May 19, 2020 8:23 pm

bmp1974 wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 2:04 pm Can anyone direct me to chess GUI that can read ebooks in windows for laptop/PC (PDF etc.)? I wonder why chessbase/Fritz have not thought about this.

You might as well ask why chess books aren't printed in PGN format.

Perhaps the closest thing to what you want is provided by https://forwardchess.com/

Any Chess GUI that reads ebooks (PDF)

Any Chess GUI that reads ebooks (PDF)

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