OpenChess

Good news for those of you that followed pgn4web developments:

any interest in testing a good beta version of the next pgn4web release?

The beta package (2.44r8676) can be downloaded from
http://pgn4web.devio.us/pgn4web/pgn4web-2.44r8676.zip

In order to use it with your forum you'd have to follow these instructions (depending on which forum you use)
http://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/User_Notes_phpBB
http://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/U ... lemachines

You will have to install the whole of the pgn4web package, replacing only pgn4web.js will not be enough.
Beware, you will lose all the customizations you made to pgn4web so far!

Please rename or keep a copy of your current pgn4web folder, just in case you need to revert back.

If you want to try, please let me know (a reply here should be ok) and I'll keep an eye on it.

This version should be ok, especially the parts used for the forum integration, but there might be still some small bugs left here and there.

I also need to update quite some documentation before the official release so there should be some time for testing.

Thanks.

pgn4web wrote:any interest in testing a good beta version of the next pgn4web release?

Anyone of those eager to get the feature for general availability interested in helping with some testing?
Anyone?

pgn4web wrote:

pgn4web wrote:any interest in testing a good beta version of the next pgn4web release?

Anyone of those eager to get the feature for general availability interested in helping with some testing?
Anyone?

I will swap this code onto OpenChess in the next 24 hours for testing.

jb

I've just installed it at www.sah.hr/forum and asked forum members to use variations and report problems.

Thank you guys so much!

p.s.
Shift-right doesn't jump into variation.

Thanks for beta testing... because of the language, it's kind of difficult for me to go through your forum... I'd appreciate if you could point here links to any PGN that fails parsing properly and if you could relay/translate any suggestion from your users.

dand wrote:Shift-right doesn't jump into variation.

shift-rigth is supposed to "cycle through alternative moves to the last played move", not sure how to label it, but this is what it does:

assume the game is 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 (2. f4 d5) (2. Nc3 Nf6) Nc6 3. Bb5
assume the position on the board is the one AFTER Nf3: if you hit shift-right now, you will cycle through 2. Nf3, 2. f4 and 2. Nc3, in other words the three alternative moves (alternative to Nf3) at the position after e5

I did it this was rather than "jump into the variation", because if I where to jump into the variation 2. f4 hitting shift-right when e5 is the last played move, then how do I allow you to jump into the other variation 2. Nc3 ? If I let you jump from 2. f4 into 2. Nc3 it would create an inconsistent behaviour. Hence the choice above.
Hope it's clear.

offtopic: After seeing this thread I had a crazy idea last night. I see that you're been improving pgn4web continuously and adding features as users request them. I've been wondering if you have planned to on the future implement more advanced features like engine loading, Infinite Analysis, storage of analysis and other features of a chess GUI, so people could go and analyze positions directly on the web instead of having to depend on installed software, or if this is just outside of the potential goals of the project.

The beta version is live. Please post comments here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1890. Thanks!

pgn4web wrote:Thanks for beta testing... because of the language, it's kind of difficult for me to go through your forum... I'd appreciate if you could point here links to any PGN that fails parsing properly and if you could relay/translate any suggestion from your users.

Sure, I already told people to report, and I will also see when the board breaks, and will report it.

pgn4web wrote:

dand wrote:Shift-right doesn't jump into variation.

shift-rigth is supposed to "cycle through alternative moves to the last played move", not sure how to label it, but this is what it does:

assume the game is 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 (2. f4 d5) (2. Nc3 Nf6) Nc6 3. Bb5
assume the position on the board is the one AFTER Nf3: if you hit shift-right now, you will cycle through 2. Nf3, 2. f4 and 2. Nc3, in other words the three alternative moves (alternative to Nf3) at the position after e5

I did it this was rather than "jump into the variation", because if I where to jump into the variation 2. f4 hitting shift-right when e5 is the last played move, then how do I allow you to jump into the other variation 2. Nc3 ? If I let you jump from 2. f4 into 2. Nc3 it would create an inconsistent behaviour. Hence the choice above.
Hope it's clear.

Ok, got it. Isn't intuitive at first, but people will get used to.

dand wrote:Sure, I already told people to report, and I will also see when the board breaks, and will report it.

Daniel, I just noticed that you use an obsolete definition of the pgn tag. Your version of the pgn tag definition imposes a limitation of about 2000 characters to the length of the PGN game. When using variations, a single game can easily exceed that. If you follow the instructions and redefine the pgn tag, unlimited games length will be supported:
http://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/wiki/U ... lemachines

You just need to replace the "HTML used for the tag" element of the pgn tag definition.

Just a quick note. I've updated the pgn4web software to the 2.55 latest/greatest and added in my board coords, side-to-move and game selection fixes. I did not add in my "insert check and mate marks for games which don't have them", since it's a lot of extra code (check and mate detection for a single position is not a difficult problem, but it's implementation is non-trivial when coupled with move validation and multiple variations), and it has to be updated for Paolo's version of variation support, and I simply don't have the time. Any chess software worth the name adds + and # marks to PGN-exported moves.

If this is a hardship, and you know JavaScript, ask me for a version of the pgn4web.js file with this implemented, fix it and send it back to me. I'd be grateful, as would several others, I expect. But I don't think it's such a big deal.

Thanks again to Paolo for his continued development and support for pgn4web.

Jeremy