Scid 4.0 (chess database and training software)

[pgeorges]

Hi,

Scid 4.0 has been released. Main changes are :
- use of a new base format, so very long games with plenty of comments and variations are now correctly handled. The user can also use custom flags to mark games. When a si3 base (Scid 3.x format) is opened with this version it is automatically converted to the new format (which takes about 10 sec for a 3 million games database).
- many bug fixes
- faster input / output (some operations are 3 times faster)

It can be downloaded from http://scid.sourceforge.net

For some more details, here is an extract of the changelog (stripping bug fixes and others) :

* New base format :
- import games with a length (encoded) up to 128 kB
- 6 new user customizable flags
- any base opened in version 3 will be automatically converted to new format in a few seconds (.si3 file is converted to .si4 and then removed, .sg3 and sn3 files are renamed respectively to .sg4 and .sn4)
* NAG support : add symbolic NAGs using UTF-8 symbols
* Search position : if the search is done in a refrerence base (not the current one), don't switch to it if the result returns no game
* Tree mask :
- added a sub-menu for searching positions in a mask depending upon various criteria (comments, NAG, color, etc.)
- added a sub-menu for displaying the Mask content in a tree form
- remember the most recent opened masks
- new moves can be added to a mask even if there is no corresponding position in the Tree
* FICS :
- save options for finding opponents based on login
- display forecast of win / draw / loss score (in fact sends assess when creating the game)
* Highlight last move played (switchable and configurable in options menu)
* added a new call "sc_game info nextMoveUCI"
* new feature to review game. The user guesses moves played from one side of a played game.
* First version of VIAF/PND support for hooking up Wikipedia et al.
* Correspondence Chess:
- Sorting of the gamelist by various criteria like own clock, opponent clock (Xfcc only)
- Do not show games where the player does not have the move (Xfcc only)
- Add GUI to set sort criteria
- Implement sort by "time per move till next TC" including the next timing period (Suggested by Dhanish)
- Add Edit menu to cc window

Please report remarks or comments here or to scid-users mailing list (no PM).

Pascal Georges

[Robert Weck]

Thank you, Pascal, for this new version!


I found, that the shortcut for the comment editor (Ctrl+E) is not working (also in earlier versions)

And two things, that i would like to see in a future version:

1. A button, where i can start/stop all active engines at once (additional to the buttons for the single engine)

2. And an easier way to paste pgn from the clipboard. E. g. Ctrl+C could serve as a single shortcut for pasting pgn and fen (like in the Shredder-GUI)


best regards,
Robert

P.S.: (for me) the most important feature is the possibility to dock/undock windows (since 3.7) and save/restore these layouts. This made my (chess-)life with Scid much easier!

[Kurt Utzinger]

Thank you, Pascal, for this new version!
[...]
P.S.: (for me) the most important feature is the possibility to dock/undock windows (since 3.7) and save/restore these layouts. This made my (chess-)life with Scid much easier!

As a Linux user I can only say: SCID is a great program. I however returned to version 3.7.3 since in the 4.0 the layout of the engine window is no longer saved/restored.
Kurt

[shiv]

Thank you, Pascal, for this new version!
[...]
As a Linux user I can only say: SCID is a great program. I however returned to version 3.7.3 since in the 4.0 the layout of the engine window is no longer saved/restored.
Kurt

I recommend you subscribe to the mailing list at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users to report such issues. There are changes made to the codebase daily and issues like that (once verified) can be typically fixed quickly.