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Subject: Then again,

Author: Steven Edwards

Date: 09:06:45 04/08/05

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On April 07, 2005 at 11:05:29, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>On April 07, 2005 at 05:57:41, Marc Lacrosse wrote:

>>Here is an extract of crafty 19.19 output while trying to process my
>>"normav2300.pgn" file.
>>After that you will find the concerned games where underpromotion is in the
>>format "31.dxc8R" and not "31.dxc8=R".
>>I then created a pgn with only the two litigious games and retried.
>>This was also rejected by crafty.
>>Complete crafty output with this small file is at the end of my post.
>>
>>Best regards.
>>
>>Marc
>
>that is illegal PGN.  Unless the standard has changed, the last time I looked
>promotions were indicated as dxc8=R, _not_ dxc8R

I checked the FIDE Handbook and it says that the equals sign should not be used
here, but rather it should be reserved for indicating a draw offer.

But I don't put too much creedance in their Handbook, nor in FIDE itself.  For
example, the Handbook fails to account for the case of three or more pieces of
the same type moving or capturing to the same square where for at least some of
the moves both a rank digit and a file letter are required.  The situation is
uncommon, but it does occur.

The Handbook also states that " e.p." should be appended to en passant captures.
 As you can guess, this would increase the complexity of a parser without adding
any information to the movetext.  Also, I can't think of any recent in print
examples of this; even _Chess Life_ seems to have dropped it.

Speaking of _Chess Life_, the March 2005 issue had an article on the history of
chess notation, specifically move notation.  In the closing paragraphs, the
author reveals the identity of the person most responsible for the adoption of
modern algebraic notation by US chesspalyers: the late Sid Samole!

Samole was the founder of Fidelity Electronics, a hearing aid manufacturer that
introduced the first dedicated consumer chess computers.  But none of these
machines used standard algebraic notation; they all used a form of coordinate
notation restricted to what could be displayed on a few seven segment LEDs.
Furthermore, none of the machines had disambiguation capability for either
keypad input or display output.  Note: my comment is not intended to minimize
the contributions of Fidelity's programmers (Nelson, the Sprachlens and others);
I'd just like to set the record straight.



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