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Scid vs. PC
Chess Database and Toolkit
____________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. introduction
2. features
2..1 New and Improved features
3. download
3..1 Other resources
4. installation
4..1 Linux , Unix
4..2 Windows
4..3 Mac OS X
5. news
6. miscellaneous
6.1 docked windows
6.2 how to play
6.3 todo
6.4 known issues
6.5 bugs
6.6 thanks
6.7 scid's history
7. changes
8. contact
9. links
______________________________________________________________________
1. introduction
Shane's Chess Information Database is a powerful Chess Toolkit, with
which one can create huge databases, run chess engines, and play
casual games against the computer or online with the Free Internet
Chess Server. It was originally written by Shane Hudson , and has
received strong contribution from Pascal Georges and others.
Scid vs. PC <http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/> began with bug-fixes
for the computer-versus-player features of Scid (hence the name), but
has evolved into a solid alternative with many new features and
interfaces. The project is authored by ``Stevenaaus'' and numerous
contributors ``(thanks)''.
2. features
See ``changes'' for a comprehensive changelog, or the gallery
<https://sourceforge.net/apps/gallery/scidvspc/index.php> for some
screenshots..
2.0.1. New and Improved features
o Overhauled and customizable interface.
o Engine versus engine computer tournaments.
o Extra search features, including move, end-of-game, and
stalemate/checkmate searches.
o Drag+Drop file opens for Windows and Linux.
o Rewritten Gamelist widget with convenient context menus and
buttons, and integrated Database Switcher.
o Improved Computer Game and FICS features, including premove, and
simultaneous observed games.
o Many chess engine improvements, including max-ply option, an
unlimited number of engines running, and the function hot-keys can
be explicitly set.
o New EPD search and analyze features.
o Tri-coloured Tree bar-graphs, and options for more or less
statistics.
o Ratings Graph can show multiple players, and Score graph is an
attractive bar graph.
o Improved Book windows, including book compare, and remove move
features.
o Redone Button and Tool bars.
o The Chessboard/Pieces config widget has been overhauled, and
includes support for custom tiles and pieces.
o Browse multiple games.
o Recent Game and Player-info histories.
o Bug tested Undo and Redo features.
o The Help index is meaningful to new users, with links to the game's
main features.
o Clickable Variation Arrows, and Paste Variation feature.
o A user friendly Annotation feature, with search-to-depth feature.
o Better support for UTF and Latin character sets in PGN
export/imports.
o Improved and more powerful Tree Mask feature.
o
o Chess 960 / Fischer Chess is now supported (only by a patch).
3. download
Source scid_vs_pc-4.26.tgz
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/source/scid_vs_pc-4.26.tgz/download>
Windows Scid vs PC-4.26.exe
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/windows/Scid%20vs%20PC-4.26.exe/download>
Windows 64 bit Scid vs PC-4.26.x64.exe
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/windows-64bit/Scid%20vs%20PC-4.26.x64.exe/download>
Mac ScidvsMac-4.26.dmg
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/mac/ScidvsMac-4.26.dmg/download>
Mac 64bit (beta) ScidvsMac-4.26.x64.dmg
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/mac-64bit-
unsupported/ScidvsMac-4.26.x64.dmg/download>
3.0.1. Other resources
The latest code is available from subversion
<https://sourceforge.net/p/scidvspc/code/HEAD/tree/>
Other project files
<https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=263836>
including german / deutsch versions
4. installation
4.0.1. Linux , Unix
Installing from source is reccommended, though there exists deb packages of some versions (from third parties) in linux packages
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/linux%20packages/>, and Hanish maintains snap packages at https://snapcraft.io/publisher/hanishkvc
Scid vs. PC requires Wish (Tcl/Tk) 8.6 and a C++ compiler.
Example packages required include "tcl, tk, tcl-dev, tk-dev" and
"gcc, g++ , libstdc++"; but will vary with your distribution.
The default installation directory is /usr/local, which is generally
empty, but any version of Scid here will be overwritten. To install
into /usr (for eg) use ./configure BINDIR=/usr/bin/
SHAREDIR=/usr/share/scid/
Installing from source:
______________________________________________________________________
tar -xzf scid_vs_pc-4.26.tgz
cd scid_vs_pc-4.26
./configure
make
sudo make install
scid
______________________________________________________________________
Extra chess pieces (such as Berlin) are now enabled by default for
Wish 8.6, but 8.5 requires installing TkImg. Sound support requires
the buggy library Snack.
If your distro does not provide these packages ("tkimg", "tcl-snack"),
you can install from source using these links (both of which have
fixes applied).
TkImg
<https://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=263836&filename=tkimg1.3.scidvspc.tar.bz2>,
Snack
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/support%20files/snack2.2.10.scidvspc.tgz/download>.
Note Wish 8.5.10 has severe bugs, and many versions of Tk-8.6.x have
*severe* memory leaks. To avoid many of these leaks, or simply for a
performance boost, compile with Gregor's tk::text
(patches/gregors_tktext_inline.patch).
4.0.2. Windows
Windows installation simply requires downloading the ``executable'',
and following the prompts.
The configuration files, including the chess engine list, are stored
in the Scid-vs-PC\bin\config directory, and may be copied over from
old versions to make upgrading easier. If the app is installed in
"Program Files" On Windows 7, the config files are mirrored in
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Scid vs
PC
Our main windows build system is MinGW and Makefile.mingw. We also
have a Makefile.vc for visual studio, but it does not get updated too
often.
4.0.3. Mac OS X
The ``ScidvsMac-4.26 app'' should include everything you need. Simply
drag and drop the App into /Applications (or similar). It cannot be
run from the dmg disk image.
Due to technical build reasons, only Mac OSX 10.10 and later
are supported. Previous versions (including Snow Leopard) should install Scid vs Mac 4.16).
Additionally, Newer macOS have removed 32-bit app support, and are only supported by our beta ScidvsMac-x64 app, which is not as robust as the 32 bit version.
To compile from source - once you have XCode installed - please read
ScidvsMac-HowTo.rtfd in the source tarball for some older information.
Users upgrading may have to remove (or edit)
$HOME/.scidvspc/config/engines.dat to properly configure the chess
engines.
5. news
July 2017
Thanks to (our best bug reporter) Ileano for finding a bug in the new
Best-Games/Browser feature. I've made a 4.18.1 point release to
include the fix. This version also includes a minor PGN import fix.
October 2016
4.17 has a bit of a tough life, and is being re-released with a bug
fix 28th October. Otherwise, it is an exciting release for hackers,
with patches for chess960 and Gregors speedy tkText rewrite.
April 2015
Exciting to have some usability fixes for the Tree Mask. Hopefully
this feature will start to get some real use.
December 2013
4.11 is out, with large board sizes, and a fix for the annoying
filter/tree issue.
April 2013
Finally have a docked windows feature. It's a damn complicated thing,
but i am fond of it. Scid vs PC 4.9 is coming :)
March 2012
Big effort by Gregor to write Drag and Drop support for Scidb and
ScidvsPC. Thanks. FICS is looking great too.
September 29, 2011
Jiri Pavlovsky has made a windows installer. It's a nice piece of
software :) Big thank-you. And we now have undo and redo features.
July 8, 2011
Thanks to Gilles for the web page restructure and OSX testing. Gregor
Cramer <http://scidb.sf.net> has contributed a PGN figurine feature.
April 19, 2011
A belated thanks to Lee from Sourceforge for this article
<http://sourceforge.net/blog/after-scid-row-a-new-chess-app-is-born/>.
December 10, 2010
Scid vs. PC 4.2 includes support for Scid's si4 db format.
July 3, 2010
For the tenth release I've adopted verison number 4.0 . It includes a
new Computer Tournament feature (thanks to some UCI snippets from
Fulvio) and the Gamelist Widget is finally up-to-speed for large
databases.
April 19, 2010
Release 3.6.26.9 includes a Fics accept/decline offers widget.
December 20, 2009
Thanks to Dorothy for making me a Mac DMG package with this release ,
3.6.26.8.
August 16, 2009
With 3.6.26.6 I've fixed Phalanx's illegal castling. There is also
changes to the Setup board and Toolbar configuration widgets.
July 17, 2009
3.6.26.5 - New Gamelist widget, and re-fashioned main buttons.
Project's looking quite solid :->
June 23, 2009
The monkey on my back has really been having a good time. This release
includes changes to the Gameinfo, Comment Editor, and Board Style
widgets, some new chess pieces, colour schemes and tiles. Thanks to
Michal and Alex for feedback.
June 4, 2009
Well, the html is up, and i've got a couple of files in the downloads
section. My project is fairly modest fork of Scid ... just rewriting
Tk widgets when i get the urge.
6. miscellaneous
6.1. docked windows
This powerful feature is maturing. See the Docked Windows help item
for more info.
o Window focus automatically follows the mouse around, and also
impacts which keyboard bindings are active. Most bindings are
active when the mouse is over the main board.
o In the event of Scid failing to start, restart the program with the
-nodock option.
o Windows undocked from within docking mode can have glitches.
Mainly: drag and drop game copies in the switcher don't work.
o OS X support is not great.
Make sure to check out the new Theme Options, which affect how the
Docked Windows (and Gamelist) look and feel.
6.2. how to play
Playing against the Computer
The main Computer vs. Player feature is accessed from
Play->Computer. Here you'll find options to play against Phalanx
(a flexible computer opponent whose skill you can select), or
any installed UCI engine.
Playing on the Internet
Playing on the Internet is done via the the Play->Internet menu
item. I recommend visiting the Fics <http://www.freechess.org>
website to create a user account, but it is also possible to
play anonymously. To start a game, press the Login as Guest
button, then watch the available games as they are announced in
the console. Enter play [game number] to accept a game
challenge.
There is more information about the Fics and Tactical Game features in
the Scid Help menus.
6.3. todo
o The TCL sound package, Snack, needs fixing and a maintainer.
o Openseal is an open source version of FICS Timeseal. It needs some
rewriting to work with Scid, though it is a small program.
o FICS could be adapted to work with the ICC. The work involves
analysing the differences in the strings used by the two programs.
(for example, for FICS we have this line to ackowledge successful
log-in if {string match "*Starting FICS session*" $line]} { The two
servers do have many similarities i think, and examining xboard's
"backend.c" (or some other client) for "FICS" particularities
o Translation updates are always welcome
o There are two engine types - UCI and XBoard. Pascal's UCI code is
in some ways inferior to Shane's Xboard code. Though this is
mostly mitigated by the speed of modern processors, it'd be nice to
make use of the UCI ponder feature in analysis mode (Comp mode
already does so).
o Verify/update the Novag Citrine drivers and interface, and
Correspondence / XFCC feature.
o Our Windows port needs a little overhaul to properly use Users home
directory to store all the various data. I will get around to
doing it one day though.
o A lot of people use chessbase books (.ctg). Scid can only read
polyglot opening books, but inlining Scidb's support for ctg may
not be too hard.
6.4. known issues
o macOS Catalina and later are only supported by the buggy and slow
64 bit version.
o Linux sound playback is buggy/broken. The Wish sound package
(Snack) needs maintenance.
o Tcl/Tk-8.5.10 is buggy.
o Some versions of Tk-8.6.x have severe memory leaks. To avoid,
compile with Gregor's tk::text
(patches/gregors_tktext_inline.patch).
o PGN Window slow-downs (with huge games) can also be fixed using
Gregor's tk::text.
o OS X docked mode has some issues due to it's poor Tcl/Tk.
o Focus Issues. KDE users can allow Tcl apps to properly raise
themselves by configuring desktop > window behavior > advanced >
focus stealing prevention set to "none"
o Sometimes Scid vs. PC may have very loud/wrong colours. This can
be caused by the Window Manager exporting their color schemes, and
can normally be switched off somewhere in the window manager's
colour settings.
6.5. bugs
o See the known issues about Tcl/Tk (above).
o Importing huge PGN archives can sometimes fail. The command line
utility pgnscid is a more reliable way to create large databases
from pgn. Typing "pgnscid somefile.pgn" creates a new database
"somefile.si4".
o Using the '+' operator and clicking on 'Find' in the gamelist
widget can be very slow. The code needs to be moved from
gamelist.tcl to tkscid.cpp.
o Windows only:
o Using "ALT+F"... etc key bindings to access the menus is badly
broke. This is a Tcl/Tk issue.
o Window focus/raise issues, another Tcl/Tk issue.
o Screenshots are broken/disabled.
6.6. thanks
Thanks to Shane Hudson and the authors of Tcl/Tk <http://tcl.tk>. To
Gregor Cramer <http://scidb.sf.net> for new features and technical
support. Ozkan for his Win64 builds and knowledgable help. Christian
Opitz for his comprehensive German translation. Sourceforge.net
<http://sourceforge.net> for their great hosting, Jiri Pavlovsky for
the windows installer <http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php>. Thanks
to Pascal Georges for his many technical contributions to mainline
Scid, and also Fulvio, Gerd and the language translators. To Gilles,
Dorothy and Steve for OS X support, to Michal Rudolf for early
encouragement, and H.G.Muller
<http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/chess.html> for technical feedback.
6.7. scid's history
Scid is a huge project, with an interesting history. Originally
authored by Shane Hudson from New Zealand, it combined the power of
Tk's GUI and the speed of C, to produce a free Chess Database
application with Opening Reports, Tree Analysis, and Tablebase
support. It gained quite some attention, as it was arguably the first
project of it's kind; but after writing over a hundred thousand lines
of code, in 2004 development stopped and Shane never contributed to
Scid again.
Two new versions of Scid appeared around 2006. The first was ChessDB
authored by Dr. David Kirby. With some good documentation and the
ability to automatically download games from several web portals, it
became popular. But at the same time Pascal Georges from France was
making strong technical improvements to Scid. Frustrated with Scid's
dormancy, and because of disagreements with ChessDB's author, Pascal
released his own tree, Scid-pg, which included UCI support and
numerous Player versus Computer features.
But subtley, and with some controversy, he began to adopt the name
Scid as his own. Some people objected, especially Dr. Kirby, with whom
a flame war began, but Pascal's efforts to gain ownership of the
Sourceforge Scid project eventually succeeded.
Under Pascal, and with the help of numerous contributors, Scid again
strode forward. Pascal wrote a Tree Mask feature, and in 2009 he
upgraded the database format to si4, all the time making speed and
technical improvements to the neglect of the interface. In 2010,
Pascal ceased contributing at all, and shortly after Scid 4.3 was
released. Since then, Scid has had widespread technical changes by
Fulvio Benini, who is a long-standing contributor.
Currently there exist several Scid related projects.
Chessx was originally by Michal Rudolf (a longtime Scid contributor
from Germany) and named Newscid. Now led by Jens Nissen, with a 1.0
release, it is an attractive Chess GUI but with a small feature set
and without si4 support.
Scid vs. PC was started in 2009 by Steven Atkinson from Australia.
Forked from Scid-3.6.26, it began as an effort to consolidate many of
Pascal's new features, and has since matured into a capable Scid
successor.
The Android app, Scid on the Go, supports the si4 database format, and
is the only mobile Scid related project.
Another huge project, now without a maintainer, is Scidb by Gregor
Cramer from Germany. It is an ambitious chess database program
inspired by Scid, with heavy utilization of C++ classes and customized
Tk widgets. It also supports Chessbase databases and many chess
variants.
7. changes
Scid vs. PC 4.26
Scorebar for the Main board, and also Browser windows and Fics observed games
Analysis board improvements from Hanish
- Scorebar, Colour PV Bar, Move-Sequence arrows, and board coordinates
Clicking Crosstable 'Player' column title to sort
New 'Store Movetimes' option in Play UCI Game
Show longer variations in the EnterVar button at game end
Twin Game Checker has a few new clickables
Font Selection dialog has a working preview
Game saves don't interrupt engine analysis, and tweak engine help icon
Gamelist current game colour option (via switcher context menu)
Player Ratings context/history menu
Cut down our excess Resize event handling
Properly handle 'Stop Analysis' for Xboard engine with no 'analyze' (eg Scidlet)
Minor Fics improvements
More Latex export improvements
Hack to avoid MacOS Tree/Bestgames window crash
Fix Multi Browse BestGames didn't work for 'other' bases.
Fix Pgn column mode with big fonts
Enable proper horizontal gamelist scrolling for MacOS
Truncate long DB filenames in the Gamelist Tab and DB switcher
Disable Tree adjust after a General Search
Fix Undocked App fails to quit with an open engine
Update "Enter Var" button when we create a variation
Try to remove unicode related fluff when pasting text as fen
Scid vs. PC 4.25
Extra Tags - bulk add Extra Tag feature
Enable pattern matching in the Name Editor
Show Comments in Game Preview/Browser windows, change colours to match PGN, and ControlKey+Load does not close the Browser window
LaTex Game Export - draw Marks in chess diagrams, indent variations, and other minor changes (from Bruno)
Crosstable: add clickable column headings for Nationality, Rating and Score
Engine Annotation - Score last move in case of checkmate (and stalemate)
Tree mask - Options to hide Markers (default), disable tooltips, and make the mask move colour steelblue
Engine - Right-clicking AddAllVars adds all first moves only
Comment Editor - Remove 'Apply' button, instead automatically apply miniboard changes. Add wheelmouse move-forward/back bindings
Player Info - don't show 'filtered games' stats if they duplicate the normal stats
Make the Tree Bargraph height similar to the font height (for high def displays)
Add a few Keypad bindings, re suggestion from Patrick
Pressing Home-key inside a variation moves to var start instead of game start
General Bugs
Twin Game checker minor fixes
Some spinboxes (annotate(blunder)) had erroneous error checking and threw exceptions
Some graphs didn't show the correct final/current year, gah!
Minor optable.tcl fixes/clean-up. Opening Table max games is now 100,000 (was 25,000)
Add current decade to Opening report Current popularity
EPD analysis hardening
For a few widgets - dont scroll text windows when using control-scroll to alter font size
Update stats/etc on Game quickSave
8. contact
Scid vs. PC mailing list
<https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scidvspc-users>
Stevenaaus <email://stevenaaus at yahoo dot com> is a uni graduate in
math and computer science, who programs as a hobby in tcl/tk, bash and
C. He lives and works in rural australia.
9. links
o Scid vs. PC <http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/>
o Project page <http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc>
o Online documentation
<http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/doc/Contents.htm>
o Lumbra's Gigabase https://lumbrasgigabase.com/en/
o Player Information resources
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/scid/files/Player Data/>
o FICS <http://www.freechess.org>
o FICS game archives <http://ficsgames.org>
o Kayvan's Cross platform 'docker' images
<https://github.com/ksylvan/scidvspc>
o Chess Tech blog, with some ScidvsPC tutorials
<https://www.chesstech.info/> Part 1
<https://www.chesstech.info/2019/02/scid-vs-pc-players-pictures-
part-1.html>
o Debian/Mint/Ubuntu installation how-to
<http://www.linuxx.eu/2012/11/scid-vs-pc-installation-guide-
ubuntu.html>
o Ed Collins' Scid vs. PC page
<http://edcollins.com/chess/scidvspc/index.html>
o The PGN and EPD standards
<http://www.saremba.de/chessgml/standards/pgn/pgn-complete.htm>
o Pgn of players <http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html#players>
o Pgn of events <http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html#events>
o Inno setup <http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php> (used to make
windows installer)
o Professional quality chess icons <http://www.virtualpieces.net>
o Mailing list subscribe (must be a member to post to list)
<https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scidvspc-users>
o Mailing list archive
<http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=scidvspc-
users>
o Programmer's reference
<http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/doc/progref.html>
o UCI engine protocol <http://wbec-
ridderkerk.nl/html/UCIProtocol.html>
o Xboard engine protocol <http://www.open-
aurec.com/wbforum/WinBoard/engine-intf.html>
