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Pychess 0.2

Submitted by lobais on Wed, 2006-09-13 13:03. Bag of Software
Bag of Software

Pychess is a chess application which aims to be both fast, beautiful and simple, but at the same time have features for both networkplay and adwanced chessanalyzis.

You can grab the fairly stable 0.2 release at
Homepage: http://pychess.googlepages.com/home

Screenshots: http://pychess.googlepages.com/screenshots

Why not CSBoard? Isn't one board enough?
Well, this question could be put to a fairly large base of free software application, take away those even starting "yet another".
While CSBoard is already somehow stable, it is written in C#, which might give patent issues in the future.
Some might say that this problem is already fairly solved, there is another major difference between the programs. CSBoard has no what so ever kind of builtin move validation/move-parsing etc. While this might not be a problem when writing a simple client, it will surely become more clearly, when the task goes to network play, pgn parsing, database search and analysis.

Some thoughts are also being though about merging with glchess, to provide an optional 3D interface, but nothing is yet decided.

Pychess is intended to replace xboard as the de facto standard chess program on Linux. (Well at is it written in gtk, we might not get all the KDE users, but such life)

We are (or I am) actively seeking developers familiar in python, and (less important) pygtk.
Also translators and perhaps most important, TESTERS will be very appreciated.

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Feel free to use any parts

Submitted by Daniel Borgmann on Mon, 2006-09-18 16:16.

Feel free to use any parts of Chessmonk (http://dborg.wordpress.com/chessmonk/) for the graphical display (it's python code as well). The current SVN repository has a rewritten board view using Cairo (it still needs some performance works and lacks interactive features though). Chessmonk will have PGN editing as well, so I hope we won't have too much overlap in this area. IMO a database/analysis tool is very different from a chess playing client.

I never really liked the "do-it-all" approach of XBoard to be honest. For ICS, I would prefer an interface which is dedicated to it. Also, I believe that eboard already provides a much better user experience than xboard (for playing online).

Looks good.

Submitted by lobais on Tue, 2006-09-19 06:39.

Thanks :) I've already looked a little on your animation code. Nice program you have there.
As python already has full SAN read/write, I don't believe pgn will be too hard though.

I don't 100% share your "don't do it all" thought, as I think programs like fritz does that quite good. I agree with you though, that Xboard is a little unintuitive to use :)

That was supposed to be a

Submitted by Daniel Borgmann on Mon, 2006-09-18 16:18.

That was supposed to be a reply to your comment above. I always seem to get logged out on this site.

some criticism by Anonymous George (not verified)

Thanks :)

Submitted by lobais on Mon, 2006-09-18 08:41.

You are very right, that replacing xboard might be a quite high goal :)
Though I think that it is good to measure your programs with the best in the category.

It is also correct that "crazyhouse / bughouse support" has never been the plan, but pgn editing and graphical effects should not be long in the future.

I still believe though, that there is need for pychess. If you have some important feature wishes, please let me know :)

What do you need developers for ? by Anonymous George (not verified)

Most things :D

Submitted by lobais on Fri, 2006-09-15 08:39.

Well, prety much for everything on http://code.google.com/p/pychess/issues/list
There are some network things, some graphical things, some setup scripting things and some other things.
Also packagers, translators and testers.

Right now I'm discussing with the glChess author, whet ever to merge. The overall goals and feature ideas of pychess are still the same though.

FICS

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Fri, 2006-09-15 10:08.

would be great if support for FICS [http://www.freechess.org/] will be added!
I can help in protocol writing if you plan to add that.

Would be a great help!

Submitted by lobais on Fri, 2006-09-15 16:16.

I certainly plan to add that, and since the ICS protocol is not too easy to implement, help would be very appreciated!

If you like, I can give you subversion access at this very point. You should contact me on lobais@gmail.com, then we can also discuss the UI elements needed.