Scid vs. PC 4.5

[stevenaaus]

The main new features are small chess figurines in the PGN Window
and per-game time control , clocks and adjudication buttons for the Computer Tournament.

http://scidvspc.sf.net

There's been lots of work with the new OSX package, and it's really feeling solid.
Minimum system is OSX 10.5.

On Windows, there's been more than a few minor tweaks,
(but we probably need a volunteer to make a nice windows
installer).

In the PGN window there is now an option to display Chess
Pieces. This depends on the ScidChessBerin.ttf font being
correctly installed on your operating system. On Windows
you'll probably have to drag the fonts (from bin/fonts)
to /Windows/Fonts.

Changelog

PGN Window:

PGN chess font support (but font installation on Windows isn't great)

Computer Tournament:

Per-game time control
Clock widgets for remaining time.
Manual adjudication buttons, and a Restart button.

General:

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

MS Windows tweaks:

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

OSX:

Make an OSX app with a working ;> version of Tcl (thanks Gilles)
Many OSX wheelmouse and graphical fixes.

Bug 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.

[David Dahlem]

The main new features are small chess figurines in the PGN Window
and per-game time control

Any plans to add Fischer time control (x minutes + x seconds increment) or tournament time control (x moves in x minutes)?

Regards
Dave

[Amstaff]

Hello Steven, thanks for the nice update. I have installed a few of the top engines and cannot get Critter 1.2 to start. Others like stockfish, houdini, and rybka work fine.
Could you check this? It is probably something I'm doing wrong.
Thanks,
Gerald

[Ponti]

What about that "timeseal" issue?

Do you plan to make it easier to change colors without editing config files? (I can do that, but some of my students are children...).

[stevenaaus]

What about that "timeseal" issue?

Do you mean timeseal for OSX. It is available here:
http://www.freechess.org/Download/timeseal_MACOSX

Do you plan to make it easier to change colors without editing config files? (I can do that, but some of my students are children...).

Yes, the command is now working. In the FICs command line , type "fg white" for white, or typing "fg" or "foreground" alone will pop-up a color chooser. The backgound colour commands are "bg" or "background".

[stevenaaus]

Hello Steven, thanks for the nice update. I have installed a few of the top engines and cannot get Critter 1.2 to start. Others like stockfish, houdini, and rybka work fine.
Could you check this? It is probably something I'm doing wrong.
Thanks,
Gerald

I have Critter 1.2 working great on Linux. It is very strong and in my testing it beats Stockfish at fast speeds, but loses in longer games.

If i recall it does fail to start if it's "Use Book" setting is selected and it cannot find the book.
So all i can think of is to Configure the Engine with the correct book directory, (which should probably have read/write permissions) , or deselect the "Use engine book" option in the "Configure UCI engine" box.

[stevenaaus]

Any plans to add Fischer time control (x minutes + x seconds increment) or tournament time control (x moves in x minutes)?

Fischer time control is per-game + increment i believe, and is already included. "x moves in x minutes" is trivial to implement now... but it's just a matter of making that configuration widget smaller &^%!^. As it is, it stretches off the bottom of my Mac, but it will probably happen next release.

[Ponti]

Hmm... somehow I can't download it, I get a loop from the download site?!

[stevenaaus]

Hmm... somehow I can't download it, I get a loop from the download site?!

Hmmm... sourceforge can be a little troublesome sometimes. These links for the OSX App work for me.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/projec ... ror=aarnet

http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvsp ... g/download

[Amstaff]

Hello Steven, unchecking the internal book did the trick! Many thanks.
Gerald