[Scidvspc-users] Scidbase and TWIC

[Steven <ste...@ya...>]

I went through the old mailing list articles about TWIC and direct downloads, and have started to think it would be "fair enough" to have a direct download feature.

But i'm probably not too keen on it anyway.  These direct downloads are ChessDB's only decent feature that i've noticed. But there are better ways of achieving the same goal. http://www.ficsgames.org/ is a great resource, and the Million Base 1.74 database is built on twic games i think.

Which brings me to the main issue: A good, free, regularly updated Scid database is what we really want, would save a heap of duplication of effort and be a nice resource. Shane once offered Scidbase on cdrom available by donation, but i never saw it, and it is no longer available afaik.


Producing (and maintaining) a high quality base is the issue. But I'm certainly not an authority on database quality, and perhaps the problem is in pleasing "most people" ?


Steve


P.S. For those wanting to test out this feature on ChessDB, I think this patch is correct and needed to make it work with wish8.5


--- tcl/tools/download-twics.tcl.orig   2012-06-27 07:46:32.000000000 +0000
+++ tcl/tools/download-twics.tcl        2012-06-26 21:45:08.000000000 +0000
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 # and so never fail to get the latest 
 
 proc ::tools::maximumTWICnumber {{when today}} {
-    set time [clock scan $when]
+    set time [clock seconds]
     set year [clock format $time -format %Y]
     # might want %W instead of %U; see the [clock] man page
     set week [scan [clock format $time -format %U] %d]