Copyright: v 1.4 Copyright CVR inc. 1998
Citation: v1.4 Copyright CVR inc. 1998


Help Contents
Chess2 Table of Contents

v1.4 25 September 1998

Introducing Chess2

Menu Items

Open

Exit

Copy Move EPD

Copy Program

Copy Board

Status Bar

Small Pieces

Medium Pieces

Large Pieces

Invert Board

Help Topics

About Chess2

Windows

Game Moves

Game List

Chess Board

Portable Game Notation (PGN)

PGN Syntax

EPD/FEN Descriptors


Open
Introducing Chess2

Chess2 is a Portable Game Notation (PGN) viewer, which runs under Windows95, 98 and NT.

* It reads PGN files, which contain one or more games in PGN notation.

* It can list up to 256 games and sort over 9 fields including:

* File Position Id

* ECO

* White Name

* Black Name

* Result

* Event

* Round

* Site

* Date

* Lists each game with substantive information about each.

* Allows each game to be ‘played’ from either a White or Black perspective.

* Provides the ability to copy the current position, the current game or the current board to other programs for printing or further analysis.

* Supports F1 and Shift-F1 Help standards for flexible and coherent User Help


Open

Select and Open a PGN file. This is a standard File Open command that loads and decodes the games contained in the selected file. Side effects are a new list of games with the first game in the file displayed in the Moves Window.


Exit

This is the formal method of closing down the program. Regardless of the origin of the shutdown command, all files are properly closed and resources are returned to the system.


Copy Move EPD

Copy Move EPD extracts the EPD descriptor string from the current board position and copies it to the Clipboard. From the Clipboard this text string can be moved to any other Clipboard-friendly program for further manipulation and/or printing. EPD (Extended Position Description) is described elsewhere.


Copy Program

Copy Program moves the current game consisting of the ‘standard’ tag-pairs header and the move-text for the currently selected game to the Clipboard. From the Clipboard this text string can be moved to any other Clipboard-friendly program for further manipulation and/or printing


Copy Board

Copy Board takes a bitmap snapshot of the current board and copies it to the Clipboard. From the Clipboard this graphic can be moved to any other Clipboard-friendly program for further manipulation and/or printing


View Status Bar
Status Bar

The status bar provides its normal Windows functions in providing a localized target for the display of lightweight help text. This menu item toggles the bar’s visibility and its state will be remembered from session to session.


Small Pieces

This menu item selects a chessboard graphic with Smaller Chess pieces.


Medium Pieces

This menu item selects a chessboard graphic with Medium sized Chess pieces.


Large Pieces

This menu item selects a chessboard graphic with larger sized Chess pieces.


Invert Board

Inverting the Chessboard allows one to view a game from either White or Black’s viewpoint.


Help Finder
Help Topics

Selecting this menu Item activates the Chess2 Help program at the table of contents.


About Chess2

Copyright and company info for Chess2


Game Moves

When a game is selected the moves are displayed in the Game Moves Window. Each move consists of a white-black pair with the move number preceding the white move. The moves may be selected with the mouse (left-button click) or the arrow keys. As the move highlighter is changed from move to move the corresponding board position is displayed in the Chessboard Window. A sample set of game moves follows:

1. e4	     this is a comment for the first white move of the game

    e5	     comments from the text either ‘;’ or ‘{…}’

2. Nf3

    Nc6

3. Bb5

    a6

4. Ba4

    Nf6

Note that the F6 key will toggle between the Game List and Game Moves windows.


Game List

Upon opening a PGN game file, the program loads and parses the entire game set to a maximum of 256 games. Each game is expected to have at least one entry in the tag section and a move-text section. The information gleaned from the tag section is subsequently displayed in the game list window as one row of tags per game. The tag columns may be sorted by left-mouse clicking the appropriate header button. This window will sort on any single column at a time but only one sort field can be active. The Id field (first column) is added by the program to document the location of the game in the PGN file and can be used to restore the original sequencing of the file during game viewing. From left to right:

Id:	Sequential location in the PGN file from 0..255

ECO	Opening code from the “Encyclopedia of Chess Openings”

White	Name of player of white pieces

Black	Name of player of black pieces

Result	Result of the game

Event	Name of tournament event

Round	Round identifier in tournament

Site	Where played

Date	When played

Obviously, these fields will only have data if the author of the game file has taken the time to insert the tag fields containing the correct information

Selecting a game: move the highlight bar to the game that you desire to view using the mouse or the keyboard. Either press the Enter key or double-click the left mouse button over the selection. Note that the F6 key will toggle between the Game List and Game Moves windows.


Chess Board

The Chessboard window displays the current status of the board as reflected by the move selected from the current game. You can display the board in three sizes and two orientations (white view and black view). The bitmap of the board can be copied to the Clipboard for use in other programs or files.

The chess pieces were specially designed for clarity in viewing.


PGN Syntax

PGN is the Open Standard of the chess world for documenting chess games. While human-readable, it is not particularly human-friendly, therefore the need for a PGN Viewer.

The document used to define the behavior of Chess2 was published by Steven J. Edwards, Revised: 1994.03.12 and is currently available from the World Wide Web. An in depth review of the characteristics of PGN is available in the document. A few relevant highlights are presented below:

A PGN Game is composed of two sections: a tag section and a move text section. An empty line typically separates each section. A sample game follows:

[Event "F/S Return Match"]

[Site "Belgrade, Serbia JUG"]

[Date "1992.11.04"]

[Round "29"]

[White "Fischer, Robert J."]

[Black "Spassky, Boris V."]

[Result "1/2-1/2"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3 Nb8 10. d4 Nbd7 11. c4 c6 12. cxb5 axb5 13. Nc3 Bb7 14. Bg5 b4 15. Nb1 h6 16. Bh4 c5 17. dxe5 Nxe4 18. Bxe7 Qxe7 19. exd6 Qf6 20. Nbd2 Nxd6 21. Nc4 Nxc4 22. Bxc4 Nb6 23. Ne5 Rae8 24. Bxf7+ Rxf7 25. Nxf7 Rxe1+ 26. Qxe1 Kxf7 27. Qe3 Qg5 28. Qxg5 hxg5 29. b3 Ke6 30. a3 Kd6 31. axb4 cxb4 32. Ra5 Nd5 33. f3 Bc8 34. Kf2 Bf5 35. Ra7 g6 36. Ra6+ Kc5 37. Ke1 Nf4 38. g3 Nxh3 39. Kd2 Kb5 40. Rd6 Kc5 41. Ra6 Nf2 42. g4 Bd3 43. Re6 1/2-1/2


Chess Board
EPD/FEN Descriptors

EPD descriptors are text strings that describe the current board position. The detailed description is in the PGN Standard document referenced in the PGN help section. A brief description follows:

Piece Placement Data: eight fields separated by slashes. Each field represents a row on the chessboard and contains characters representing the pieces and number representing the contiguous spaces interspersing the pieces. The pieces are in two groups, white: PRNBQK and black: prnbqk.

Active Color: separated by a space	 ‘w’ or ‘b’ for white or black to move next.

Castling Options: there at best four castling options so this field can be up to four letters (separated by a space from the previous field):

White Kingside (K)

White Queenside (Q)

Black Kingside (k)

Black Queenside (q)

No castling for either side (-)

En Passant Square: if the last move created an En Passant opportunity it is designated by the column letter. If there is no En Passant on this move there will be a ‘-‘.

 For the purposes of Chess2, you can consider FEN equivalent to EPD.

Obviously this is complex, and if you are interested you need to find a good reference, the standard white paper is recommended.