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ChangeLog

ChessDB is based on the very successful Scid database written primarily by Shane Hudson. A list of the differences between the last version of Scid and the current version of ChessDB are briefly listed elsewhere.

Changes between consecutive releases of ChessDB.

This section details specifically what changes were made to ChessDB, the version numbers and dates they were made.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.12-beta-8 (2007-02-10) and ChessDB 3.6.12-beta-1 (2007-01-16)

ChessDB version "3.6.12-beta-8 may be downloaded from the Sourceforge web site. You can get the Windows executable or the source code which will easily compile under Linux or UNIX - in fact ChessDB is developed on Solaris. A list of the changes from the previous release as below.

• To make maintenance easier, all language files have been split into 4. $lang-basic.tcl (where the $ is swedish, itailian etc), $lang-eco.tcl, %lang-help.tcl and $lang-tips.tcl. Since there is one entry per line, it is much easier to check for inconstancies. Several changes had to be made to the translated code, which may be wrong. Could all those that speak another languages please check it, A list of possible translation related problems is at listed, to make finding the problems easier. If you use a language other than English, I would appreciate if you could check the specific areas I have highlighted as likely problem areas. The language files may be found on the CVS server. Please download the relavant file, which will be $-lang-basic.tcl with your corrections. please do not include the translated bits in the body of an email - this usually goes wrong and I don't see it properly.
• Much improved connectivity to The Week In Chess (TWIC) web site.
  which is less confusing than before, as various options of dubious use have been removed.
• The connection to the TWIC web site can now be made via an HTTP proxy server
  
  I am grateful to Warren Lewis for adding the support for the proxy server
• Two tick-boxes which are in the TWIC feature now have their last values saved in the options file.
• A new logo
  
  kindly designed by James Mossop, a professional graphics artist who done the work for zero cost.
• There is a preview / demo
  
  of an interface to the chess servers. Some code has been written for this, including sufficient to connect and get the 'login' prompt from FICS. Some code for parsing the FICS output and converting to PGN has also been written
• There is much improved scope for translation, as much of the hard-coded English text has been removed. Some still remains though.
• Virtually all the text which was hard-coded to English in the startup screen has been removed. Previously the startup information was only shown in English. An Swedish example shows most of this has been removed.
• A basic translation to Korean for the main Window and startup window has been completed. Since I have not yet installed Korean support on my Sun Ultra 80 running Solaris, I can't show this properly, but I am assured it does work.
• The location of the sound files has been moved from /usr/local/bin/sounds to /usr/local/share/chessdb/sounds.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.11-alpha (2007-01-05) and ChessDB 3.6.12-beta-1 (2007-01-16)

• Downloading from TWIC now works under both UNIX and Windows - before it was only UNIX.
• Made startup window larger, as it was too small
• Corrected error in helpfile describing the file formats.
• Moved some of the http related procedures to a new file tcl/tools/http-support-procedures.tcl
• Added checkboxes, radio buttons, text viewer etc to the code dealing with downloading from the TWIC web site. This is much improved.
• Changed code dealing with downloads from TWIC to mention they are moving to a new site layout in Jan 2007, so things might break then.
• Changed code dealing with checking for updates to report not only the latest version, current version, but also information about new beta releases and also the last stable version.
• Added reference to Scid and Shane in Startup window
• Added two/three files to Makefile.mingw

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.9 (2007-01-01) and ChessDB 3.6.11-alpha (2007-01-05)

There is a lot of new code, including networking code for the first time. There are likely to be significant bugs in this, which is why it is called an Alpha release. New features include:

• Download games from The Week In Chess (TWIC) website from within ChessDB and have them automatically converted the to a ChessDB/Scid format database.
• Ability to check from the help menu if the release in use is the latest or not. This obviously needs internet access to work.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.7 (2006-12-30) and ChessDB 3.6.9 (2007-01-01)

Corrected a bug that affected the windows install (but not source) of ChessDB. The help pages, which were kept in a directory `Tutorial` which were *supposed* to be copied to one marked 'tutorial' (lower case) Unfortunately, there was a lower case 'tutorial' and the installer was copying those files, which were out of date. Hence the tutorial was next to useless. Teach me to check the windows code a bit more, as I develop only on UNIX.

Set the autoclose to '0' instead of '1' in start.tcl, so the startup screen will not close on new installations of ChessDB. I think its better to let the screen stay open until the user decides he/she wants to close it automatically by setting the option in their options file.

Add translation to Italian - translation courtesy of Giancarlo Bassi

translate E AnnotateBlundersOnly {When game move is an obvious blunder}
translate E AnnotateBlundersOnlyScoreChange {Analysis reports blunder,
with score change from/to: }
translate E BlundersThreshold {Threshold}>

Corrected missing translation text, which could cause ChessDB to crash, in all of these files. checklangs.tcl czech.tcl deutsch.tcl english.tcl francais.tcl hungary.tcl italian.tcl nederlan.tcl norsk.tcl polish.tcl portbr.tcl serbian.tcl spanish.tcl swedish.tc

Added lots of text to the Russian file, but ChessDB still hangs if Russian is selected. Perhaps a line is split in a place. The Russian file is like a lot of control characters, so hard for me to even see where there might be a problem.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.6 (2006-12-30) and ChessDB 3.6.7 (2006-12-30)

Updated tcl/lang/*.tcl so that the program did not crash if set to any language which was not English. These lines needed copying into the other language files, and the latter changed for 'E' to whatever that language is using. translate E AnnotateBlundersOnly {When game move is an obvious blunder} translate E AnnotateBlundersOnlyScoreChange {Analysis reports blunder, with score change from/to: } translate E BlundersThreshold {Threshold} Location of files is probably a bit different too. I'd like to get chessdb so it will run with no user configuration.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.4 (2006-12-18) and ChessDB 3.6.6 (2006-12-30)

1. Improved method of annotating a game, which still detects blunders, but ignores minor differences of score. Patch submitted by Jeremy White for that
2. More areas of ChessDB now use sensible dates, which are not limited to the early 2000's when Scid development stopped.
3. Startup pane is more informative.
4. A few more bits translated to German, but there is a problem doing this on the game window with some name such as delete/undelete. I think the name is significant, so changing to another language or will break the code.
5. Tutorial at http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ is now expanded a lot I aim to incorporate that into the windows installation, but probably not the UNIX one.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.3 (2006-12-16) and ChessDB 3.6.4 (2006-12-18)

German and Portugese language files updated. First attempt by me at creating a Windows executable.

Changes between ChessDB 3.6.2 (2006-12-15) and ChessDB 3.6.3 (2006-12-16)

Edited all the tcl/lang/*.tcl files (except english.tcl) to add the following 3 lines:

menuText ? PgnColorMain "Main line..." 0
menuText ? PgnColorCurrent "Current move background..." 1
menuText ? PgnColorNextMove "Next move background..." 0

where the '?' is a letter for that countries translation. This ensures that there are no errors if a different language is selected, but of course, the message is still in English.

Changes between the last Scid (version 3.6.1 on 2004-03-02) and the first release of ChessDB (version 3.6.2 on 2006-12-16)

• 3 changes which were made in an unofficial release of Scid, in the 3.6.1b source code on the unofficial Scid website. have been included. The 3 bug fixes that the 3.6.1b source code addressed were:
  • An ECO browser bug was fixed
  • A bug in sc_remote was fixed
  • A new New Main Line option when entering a new move was added.
• A newer (but I later realised not the latest) updated spell check file (spelling.ssp) from Franz Nagl was added, so spelling corrections should be better than in the last official Scid release. Note, there is also available a much larger spellcheck file, which has the ratings history of the players (hence called ratings.ssp) available, but it is large, so is was not included in ChessDB by default. (You can download this file, with spellings and rating from the ChessDB web site.)
• A new Swedish translation, from M Skjldebrand and H. Eriksson has been included too. Although the last Scid official release had a Swedish translation, this one is better.
• 4 patches posted on the unofficial Scid website. have been included. These patches:
  • Added 'Check' as one of the sounds - a WAV file for Check, is included. The accent however is very different, so this will need attending to by someone who want to use sound I suspect.
  • 3 new menu items for changing colours in the PGN window have been added.
  • A patch for improved scrollbars under Linux (and I assume all UNIX-like operating systems.
  • Removal of unused space on the Repetoir editor.
• Fixed a bug which prevented the Comment Editor from being closed with the mouse by attempting to open it a second time - all other menus can be closed in this way, but for some reason not the Comment Editor. This is only a partial fix, as it still does not work with the keyboard shortcuts - only the mouse.

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This page was last modified: September 16, 2007. 10:41:17 am GMT