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Subject: Re: PGN test game?

Author: Steven J. Edwards

Date: 06:14:09 06/14/98

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On June 14, 1998 at 02:11:31, Rob McDonell wrote:

>I would love to get some test PGN files - and FEN and EPD as well from
>anyone who has them.
>
>I'm releasing a new version of K-Chess Elite which will support reading
>and
>writing PGN, EPD and FEN file formats. It's been an interesting
>exercise,
>not because the formats are hard but because there seems to be so many
>generally accepted deviations from them. For example...
>
>*  Some PGN files have "ep" appended to en passant captures, even though
>the PGN spec prohibits it.

This is bad.  Where did people get this idea?

>*  PGN tags are usually recorded in some sort of logically grouped (at
>least to someone) order rather than according to the spec which says
>ASCII
>order.

This is not so bad.  And the Seven Tag Roster should appear first and
it's not in ASCII order.

>*  Some PGN files include WhiteCountry and BlackCountry tags which are
>not
>in the spec.

PGN 1998 will clarify this.

>*  Some EPD files don't have semicolons between operations which the
>spec
>says should follow every operation.

This is very bad, because EPD is not intended to be seen by the end user
and so problems can be very confusing.

>*  Some EPD files have miscellaneous information after the final
>semicolon,
>but this practice is never mentioned in the spec.

Again, this is very bad, because EPD is not intended to be seen by the
end user.

>*  Some FEN files seems to have comments at the end, surrounded by
>square
>brackets, again not mentioned in the spec.

Bad, bad, bad.  Naughty programmer!

>Is there somewhere these "deviations" are discussed and either condoned
>or condemned? I've tried to cater for all the above, but I'm wondering

I would suggest not going too far in catering to obvious deviations from
the standard like syntax fudging.

-- Steven (sje@mv.mv.com)



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