Benoit St-Pierre wrote:
Hi!
> A few months ago was discussed the idea to include a
> default database. I was juggling about many ideas,
> nothing convincing : Morphy's games, Zurich 1953, the
> example database from [Scid's tutorial] [1], etc.
Well most of this can easily be created from a larger DB.
> But now I think something came up that seems very
> interesting : latest Edward Winter's [Chess
> Explorations][2] are about the best games of the greatest,
> according to themselves. I think this little collection
> of about 40 games is very interesting to have for its own
> sake.
>
> I know, I know, they come from the Dark Side. Still,
> sometimes the Dark Force can be put to good use. The
> games in PGN can be downloaded [there][3] :
>
> So, any take on this matter ?
Do you think it one can demonstrate the features of scid
with a small DB, communicating what's really great about
it? Or isn't it a large DB required for scid to reveal its
main features? This is a real question. I'm just thinking
about whether a new user would not just see scid as "yet
another PGN viewer", as many of the interesting features
come only into play with a really large reference DB.
Additionally, though I'm really no expert on the issue, I
don't know whether it is ok to include the PGN mentioned.
Copyright is a very strange thing and actually one shoul
abandon these laws. But right now this is unfortunately not
in sight... From this point if one wants to include a small
example base it could be less troublesome to use some
"standard" like all world championship matches, Zurich 1953,
Rejykavik 1972 or the like. Ie. something where no
"intellectual selection" was made by some author. Otherwise
it would be wise to check with this author for permission.
One could also think about offering a large reference DB.
Some time ago chesslib.no offered a free 2*10^6 games subset
of their main db, and they also released their final db to
the public domain before the site went down. Today you can
not get this DB from chesslib.no, but still I'd have the
complete DB available here. I'd not pack such a thing into
scid distribution of course but one could offer it as an
additional ressource.
Also a community project within the current scid framework
to create such a DB is worth to consider. A start might be
"complete TWIC" plus manual selection of major tournaments
before TWIC started, or whatever. I don't know what the
community here thinks about such a thing, but actually if
there are some volunteers that says "ah, if I only could I'd
support this project but I don't know a thing about
programming" this would be a place to start. Besides,
workload on such a project scales pretty well: if a
tournament is not included in V1.0, so be it it can come in
V1.01... Acutally, I think if there're some volunteers that
have fun with such things in the end Scid-Mega would be
better than CB-Mega ;) Especially taking care about
doublette games, crosschecking that all tournaments are
included completely and stuff like that makes this a bit
more difficult than just adding TWIC every other week.
Additionally, delivering a good predefined index to such a
DB is really worth some work.
A similar project would be to set up a really good opening
book. E.g. Arena's main opening book is created by such an
efford. Ok, there's one person in charge that works this
out, but still it could be that in the community here some
people are arround that say: ok, lets set such a thing up,
I'm an expert in the Sicilian and you can my friend is a
special fan of the Ruy and in our local club...
Though I think I'd not place such things within the main
distribution but into some "additional ressources" part.
--
Kind regards, / War is Peace.
| Freedom is Slavery.
Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength.
|
| Theory : G. Orwell, "1984"
/ In practice: USA, since 2001
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
It's the best place to buy or sell services for
just about anything Open Source.
http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php
_______________________________________________
Scid-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users
