Author: Bob Green
Date: 13:13:30 09/11/01
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On September 10, 2001 at 19:55:18, Bob Green wrote: >On September 10, 2001 at 13:37:48, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On September 10, 2001 at 13:19:37, Bruce Moreland wrote: >> >>>The PGN standard seems to be owned by Steven J. Edwards. The standard is >>>extremely important, and he hasn't made any changes to it for the past several >>>years, so there is now an attempt to declare him unimportant and change the >>>spec. <snip/> >>> >>>Is this the way the PGN standard should go? >> <snip/> >> >>On the other hand, a new standard could be created from scratch. > >First off, I'm an XML bigot. But that doesn't necessarily make the following >wrong :) > >I think PGN could be improved and made **much** more flexible by creating a new >standard from scratch using XML Schema. Converting a text-based XML document to > information usable in your program (viewer, game engine, whatever) is very >easy; there are XML parsers in every language known to (pick the diety of your >choice.) > >XML obviates the issue above - you don't "break" the existing XML standard when >you extend it to include new features - the "X" in XML is for eXtensible after >all. > <bigSnip/> > >Yep, this standard would be a **whole** lot more chatty...that is the biggest >downside of XML. But the fact that any ol' computer can read it w/o writing a >bunch of code is the upside and humans can still follow it pretty well. > >The existing PGN notation schema (i.e. the rules to follow when writing a PGN >document) could be converted to an XML Schema fairly simply - let's call this >new XML language PGN-XML. Since it is a new language we could throw in some >bones to non-chess games as well (no problem since XML is intrinsically >extensible.) An add some tags for clock control...optional naturally. > >Then some sharp cats could write a PGN to PGN-XML converter. > >In any event, this is a radical approach to a simple extention to the PGN >standard. Does anyone besides me see some merit in this? > >Bob Green Looks like several others have had this idea earlier. See Brad Merril's PGNXML concept at: http://www.cybercom.net/~zbrad/Chess/pgnxml/ Also, please see Oliver Sick's ChessML at: http://www.schachprobleme.de/chessml/draft/ There are at least two other proposals for an XML based representation of chess games. As is often in anything XML, Robin Cover has an excellent set of links on this topic at: http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/chessML.html FYI Bob Green
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