Author: Peter Herttrich
Date: 07:47:23 09/30/98
Collecting is a painful work.
Hello together,
last weekend one more time i walked through the net
on my search for games. My collection needs food.
Here i will write a little bit about my experience and
the problems with this work.
So much clubs, communities and other unitions are
publishing in the web. Great! Fine! Or not?
When a Swedish club publishes in swedish, a Czech club
in czech, a Spanish in spain, a Denmark in denish...,
i think you know what i want to say. How much languages
i have to learn? If u put a html-site into the net, then
it should be in ENGLISH! Nothing against the native
language, but this can only be the second one.
Sometimes i find the archives with the games with try
and error or with a little intuition. This is not
very satisfying.
Next problem: It's really nice to see well organized
tables, where i have the choice what to download.
Really? If i find a table with dozens of clickable
files (with leftshift-click), i ask myself, if this
site-master ever has tried, to download this whole
bunch. Every server is able to run a little ftp-server.
Why for hell is this never used?
The ftp-protocol is much more stable and faster then
the sick download with a browser. I can use a real
ftp-client with much longer time-out-parameters and
reget-function. The ftp-clients in the browsers are not
able for this and they have no mget-function.
The worst thing: With a browser i cannot mark all
files and then download them with one kick.
And one more problem: After sucking a file in .zip
and unzipping it, i have to discover, it's in
Chessbase-Format or in ChessAssistant or in
Micro$oft-Word (no joke!) or in another Database-
format. Ok, good parts are in pgn, hurray.
I cannot buy any Database-Software, only to read in
the file and to convert it to pgn. This is by far
to expensive. On the other side i use UNIX for
collecting and managing this big collection.
Ever tried to edit a 90MByte-pgn file with a
text-editor under DOS or Window$?, and tried to
get rid of this stupid control-characters, which
one of this DOS/Windows-programs have inserted
in the pgn-file? Nice job, i tell u. There are also
no good tools like sed or awk under Micro$oft.
Every newer Chessprogram can handle pgn, every
newer Chess-Database-program can handle pgn.
If you publish games, your first choice has to be
pgn, as second choice take what u want. So everyone
has the possibility, to read this file.
For the pgn: Nice to see, what the people think
about the pgn-standard. There are self-created
tags, which no program or converter understands.
End of the song is a crashing program.
They insert nice control-characters in the tags or
elsewhere. End of the song ......
At every end of a line a CR/LF. Terrible. Just
pushed a 137MByte-pgn through the filter and
got 134Mbyte. 3MByte CR!!! For what? And it is not
POSIX-conform.
There are to much or less brackets inside the notation
for variations. Result: Converter or program stops
with an error. I ask myself, did they ever check
their files?
There are nice non-pgn-conform result-tags. There
are Result-tags with result but no result at the
end of the game or vice versa.
There are comments without brackets, no blank lines
between tags and game. Or reformatted games with
LF inside a move! Sometimes i do not believe it,
what i found. (Have to look into the mirror
next time, i'm sure there are some more gray hairs)
Then there are illegal moves. Yes, this also i try
to repair. Good old wooden board is therefore recycled.
Mostly i can find the error and edit the file.
Publishers PLEASE:
Use the ENGLISH language for your Web-Pages.
Use a FTP-Server for download-offer.
Check the files for PGN-conformity.
Check the files for INTEGRITY.
My and others work would be much easier.
I try, to do my best, to publish really big
free pgn-collections. I think, Daniel Corbit
will be with me (Hi Danny!).
My target is, to have a free Mega-Base in
pgn. We have so much free and good chessprograms,
so everyone should have the possibility, to
use a big collection for building openingbooks
or just for searching/looking into games.
But the last mile is a stony way.
Thanks for your patience and cheerio.
Peter
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