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Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:51 am
by Guenther
sovaz1997 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 2:34 am
I agree. I think we need a binary format, we must get away from the PGN format.
There are already compressed binary schemes for converting from pgn, as scid and cbh.
Please don't forget that PGN originally also had the goal to be easily readable by Humans too!
Thx god I am able to create my own scripts always to convert all kinds of ugly malformed
and misstreated PGNs to something I like - and yes, I often read them like books and
sometimes w/o chess boards too.
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 9:36 am
by sovaz1997
Guenther wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:51 am
sovaz1997 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 2:34 am
I agree. I think we need a binary format, we must get away from the PGN format.
There are already compressed binary schemes for converting from pgn, as scid and cbh.
Please don't forget that PGN originally also had the goal to be easily readable by Humans too!
Thx god I am able to create my own scripts always to convert all kinds of ugly malformed
and misstreated PGNs to something I like - and yes, I often read them like books and
sometimes w/o chess boards too.
Does SCID support the evals of engines as in TCEC (with additional parameters)?
Because of this, I just started the topic. If there is, then the issue is resolved. I wanted to create a program that could show the games of the TCEC (or any other tournament) offline
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 9:52 am
by Guenther
sovaz1997 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 9:36 am
Guenther wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:51 am
sovaz1997 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 2:34 am
I agree. I think we need a binary format, we must get away from the PGN format.
There are already compressed binary schemes for converting from pgn, as scid and cbh.
Please don't forget that PGN originally also had the goal to be easily readable by Humans too!
Thx god I am able to create my own scripts always to convert all kinds of ugly malformed
and misstreated PGNs to something I like - and yes, I often read them like books and
sometimes w/o chess boards too.
Does SCID support the evals of engines as in TCEC (with additional parameters)?
Because of this, I just started the topic. If there is, then the issue is resolved. I wanted to create a program that could show the games of the TCEC (or any other tournament) offline :)
I don't know, never tried it, but there are also several scid flavoured GUIs to try.
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:12 am
by hgm
PGN is intended as a format to interchange games between humans on text-based media (such as web pages). Binary formats are suitable only for storage in databases. As Guenther points out, several well-developed formats for this purpose already exist, and are in wide-spread use.
If you think you can design better database programs than scid or chessbase, by all means, go ahead. But it has absolutely nothing to do with PGN, and being completely ignorant of what you will be competing against doesn't seem a promising starting point.
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:28 am
by gbtami
I suggest everyone to read Tord Romstad old suggestion here
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments ... pgn_format It was very interesting.
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:46 am
by sovaz1997
hgm wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:12 am
PGN is intended as a format to interchange games between humans on text-based media (such as web pages). Binary formats are suitable only for storage in databases. As Guenther points out, several well-developed formats for this purpose already exist, and are in wide-spread use.
If you think you can design better database programs than scid or chessbase, by all means, go ahead. But it has absolutely nothing to do with PGN, and being completely ignorant of what you will be competing against doesn't seem a promising starting point.
The goal is to add the values of the engines to the game file. Moreover, the engine can be far from one.
Thus, you can get some unification of online tournaments, and then use a separate client to view the tournaments (with eval schedules, etc.). Well, and view games offline. And I want to unify so that it is just more convenient for everyone to use this.
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:48 am
by sovaz1997
Thank you for the article!
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:52 am
by hgm
It seems to me that this is mainly driven by programmer interest. "Oh, let's do away with SAN, because it is such a pain to write a parser for that"...
But programmer-friendliness should not have any weight. Approximately 0% of those ending up using the format will program their own parser.
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:58 am
by sovaz1997
hgm wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:52 am
It seems to me that this is mainly driven by programmer interest. "Oh, let's do away with SAN, because it is such a pain to write a parser for that"...
But programmer-friendliness should not have any weight. Approximately 0% of those ending up using the format will program their own parser.
Yes, I already thought it would be easier to expand the PGN format and that's it. The main thing for me is to unify the formats of online tournaments, I am not going to compete with anyone, since it is impossible to do better than ChessBase alone, and the main goal is different
Re: PGN standard, its improvement and standardization
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 11:03 am
by Guenther
sovaz1997 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:58 am
...
The main thing for me is to unify the formats of online tournaments, I am not going to compete with anyone, since it is impossible to do better than ChessBase alone, and the main goal is different :D
Well, the 'online tournaments' will always invent new formats ;-)
(TCEC, CCCC, you name it)