Author: Andreas Stabel
Date: 01:59:53 05/26/98
Go up one level in this thread
On May 25, 1998 at 09:05:26, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On May 25, 1998 at 08:43:33, Andreas Stabel wrote: > >>On May 23, 1998 at 16:11:07, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >> >>> >>>talked with Tim last night, in fact... I converted to a more readable >>>PV format several months ago, producing analysis that fits the PGN >>>standard a little better.. and the "23. ... h3 etc" format that is >>>correct for PGN is confusing winboard. This can be turned off with >>>"display nomovenum" or by leaving off the "show thinking"... >>> >>>And Tim said 3.6.8beta will have better move parsing... soon... >> >>Just to clear up a misunderstanding, the correct PGN format for giving >>the >>move number of a black move is 23... h3, although the above should be >>accepted >>as an import format. > >actualy, it should be 23. ... h3. If you read the pgn standard, the >move >number should be followed by a period, which should be followed by a >space. >then, the "..." is used to indicate a missing white move. > >ie this is the exact move format needed by winboard/xboard, which can >cause >some confusion. > >> >>I quote here the relevant text from the standard: >>8.2.2.2: Export format move number indications >> >>There are two export format move number indication formats, one for use >>appearing immediately before a white move element and one for use >>appearing >>immediately before a black move element. A white move number indication >>is >>formed from the integer giving the fullmove number with a single period >>character appended. *** A black move number indication is formed from >>the >>integer giving the fullmove number with three period characters >>appended. *** > >I believe that this is simply ambiguously written. IE the syntax >"23... e4" has not been used anywhere that I have seen. And every >chess publication seems to support the usual 23. ... e4 type notation. > >I'll ask Steven, but even a few epd tests I have seen give the same >format for solution moves (as 23. ... e4). > >although in this case, it's a moot question since the "..." broke >older winboards (up until tim's latest fix...) > >one other thing... back in the discussion about "move number" it >clearly gives the format 23.<space> as required. Seems like this has >a hole similar to a few of the ANSI C standard, which is not always >pristine. :) > > I'm sorry to say that I still disagree. There are two reasons for this, the first is that the text quoted above is unambiguous to me and the second is that I've read a lot of PGN files and as far as I remember they all use the n... format. I even checked it by reading part of the wall.pgn before I wrote this, and all places I found where a black move number was given this format was used. In fact I have a program that reads PGN, and this program fails if it get the n. ... format and I've used this program to scan large PGN files like the wall.pgn large.pgn medium.pgn and several others I've dowloaded from the net. It would be nice if we could get a final answer to this question, so if anybody has some more information please share. Regards Andreas Stabel
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.