HCE feature requests

[packi]

I'd like to suggest adding the possibility of marking squares and dragging arrows by say cmd+click and cmd+drag. This would be great for analyzing your games and playing correspondence chess in order to remember your plans when you don't make a move for days.

[Mark Uniacke]

A super GM asked me for the arrows in December so you are in good company. We have prototyped the use of arrows and other forms of highlighting of squares. At present this feature has not been planned in but it is one we want to include at some point.

In the meantime, I would also suggest the comment and annotation feature to record your comments.

Answering an earlier query, version 2 is not due until the autumn.

[Eric Wainwright]

Hi Mark,

After using HCE on almost a daily basis, I have a few more suggestions:

Bigger items:
1)  A statistical overview of the players in the Players Explorer would be great (maybe with a built-in ELO rating calculation?). I imagine you could sort on the different columns of statistics.

2)  Some sort of quick help for ECO codes would be nice, possibly under the Help menu. (The Openings menu in the Play > New Game dialog also could list the ECO codes.)

Little items:
3) Double-clicking on a line in the Game Explorer should open the Edit Header dialog.

4)  When you create a new game, paste a game record, then save the game, the game line should advance to the pasted game. (I often find myself editing the wrong game.)

5) The ability to insert line-feeds in comments would be nice.

6) After resigning or drawing a game (offered by the player), the Hiarcs Ponder mode still runs.

7) When creating a new game by playing moves on the board (or clicking in the Opening Explorer), the Takeback command is often disabled. There doesn't seem to be a way to delete moves.

Thanks for your consideration,

-Eric

[King_Me]

Not sure if this is possible with HCE 1.2 for Mac, as I haven't found a way to do this, but would be great for version 2. What I would like to do is take some subset of games (multi select) in a data base and and have them analyzed, one after another automatically. Currently i have to select each game, run the game analysis, then select the next game. This way i could mark say a dozen or so games to be analyzed while at work or asleep and have them waiting for me when i return.

Other than that I have pretty much abandoned CB's GUI (worst interface ever...) and currently only using chessbase as an archival tool, exporting groups of games out in pgn format so i can work with them in HCE. All in all i am pretty much living in HCE. Great job guys!

The only other feature I would love to see in HCE is the ability to add additional engines for analysis, similar to CB's cloud engine. I don't need anything as fancy or as complicated as that, just my own computers on my local network would be more than enough.

Again, great job!!

[Mark Uniacke]

Hi Mark,

After using HCE on almost a daily basis, I have a few more suggestions:

Bigger items:
1)  A statistical overview of the players in the Players Explorer would be great (maybe with a built-in ELO rating calculation?). I imagine you could sort on the different columns of statistics.

2)  Some sort of quick help for ECO codes would be nice, possibly under the Help menu. (The Openings menu in the Play > New Game dialog also could list the ECO codes.)

Little items:
3) Double-clicking on a line in the Game Explorer should open the Edit Header dialog.

4)  When you create a new game, paste a game record, then save the game, the game line should advance to the pasted game. (I often find myself editing the wrong game.)

5) The ability to insert line-feeds in comments would be nice.

6) After resigning or drawing a game (offered by the player), the Hiarcs Ponder mode still runs.

7) When creating a new game by playing moves on the board (or clicking in the Opening Explorer), the Takeback command is often disabled. There doesn't seem to be a way to delete moves.

Thanks for your consideration,

-Eric

1) Agreed that would be a useful enhancement
2) There is ECO help in the manual, but we have also been considering some ECO enhancements which i think you might like.
3) I don't agree here, I think the game should be open so when the header is opened it is clear what game header is being edited. This is especially important when I consider you point 4)
4) The highlight in the game list should reflect the current game I agree, we hope to address this in v1.3
5) As the comments are stored in PGN files this is not so simple. I do understand the point though
6) Being looked at
7) I am not sure what you mean by takeback? The takeback in the Play menu is only meant for play mode. The navigation buttons in the tool bar can be used to navigate back or forwards through a game. Also the keyboard arrow keys serve that function as does the mouse and scroll wheel.
You can delete next and previous moves using the context menu on any move (right click and a menu appears).

[Simon]

I have a suggestion about entering a new main line by holding the Shift or Ctrl keys while making a move. If promote a pawn I need to keep the key pressed while selecting the piece I'm promoting to. I'd like to be able to hold the key while moving the pawn but release it before selecting the promotion piece.

[Mark Uniacke]

1. When copying a game to an open database save it (prompt?) as a new game instead of replace opened one by default. I have already replaced a few games by copying a new game to add it to the database - really annoying, but maybe I handle it wrong.

This query was resolved via email.

For the sake of anyone who has read this thread and wondered about this - I want to clarify that Chess Explorer never replaces/overwrites an existing game with a pasted game. When you save a game or click the floppy icon the game is saved as a new game (you also enter the game header). The new games appear at the end of the game list. I think the highlight in the Game Explorer game list is what has confused a few people. We are changing the highlight in v1.3 so this is clearer.

A game is replaced if an existing game in the database is edited, i.e. the game is loaded, modified and then saved.

[Mark Uniacke]

Not sure if this is possible with HCE 1.2 for Mac, as I haven't found a way to do this, but would be great for version 2. What I would like to do is take some subset of games (multi select) in a data base and and have them analyzed, one after another automatically. Currently i have to select each game, run the game analysis, then select the next game. This way i could mark say a dozen or so games to be analyzed while at work or asleep and have them waiting for me when i return.

Other than that I have pretty much abandoned CB's GUI (worst interface ever...) and currently only using chessbase as an archival tool, exporting groups of games out in pgn format so i can work with them in HCE. All in all i am pretty much living in HCE. Great job guys!

The only other feature I would love to see in HCE is the ability to add additional engines for analysis, similar to CB's cloud engine. I don't need anything as fancy or as complicated as that, just my own computers on my local network would be more than enough.

Again, great job!!

Bulk analysis is something we have considered including the multi-select you mentioned. I think it will appear in the 2. series, I agree it would be useful for overnight analysis.

Great to hear you are using HCE as your main chess GUI and prefer it to other chess GUIs

Remote usage of engines you own may be possible in version 2, we have done some experiments using remote engines.

[Ton]

When I paste a game, it has to contain default pgn headers.

It would be nice if HCE accepts moves only. Makes copying a game from an external source easier.

My current workflow for games of which a pgn is not available, but for instance only the moves are shown on a webpage:
1. copy moves
2. paste in chessbase
3. copy
4. paste in HCE
5. Save in HCE and complete player and game info PGN headers

Even nicer would be to accept moves from different languages.
1. Nf3 = 1. Pf3 (dutch) = 1. Sf3 (german)

[Mark Uniacke]

You can paste just moves, for example:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Bd3 Nf6 6.O-O Qc7 7.Qe2 d6 8.c4 g6 9.Nc3 Bg7 10.Rd1 O-O 11.Nf3 Nc6 12.h3 Nd7 13.Be3

That pastes correctly.

I suspect if the moves have other symbols there could be an issue but please email me the text you think it should cope with and we will have a look at it.

The ability to be able to paste from other popular languages would be useful I agree provided there is no ambiguity.

[Eric Wainwright]

Mark, to your replies:

1) Double-clicking on a line in the Game Explorer should open the Edit Header dialog.
[Mark] I don't agree here, I think the game should be open so when the header is opened it is clear what game header is being edited.
[Eric] Clicking on a line changes the current game to the one you click on, so double-clicking would just be a shortcut for clicking once,
then cmd-E (or Game > Edit Header).

2) When creating a new game by playing moves on the board (or clicking in the Opening Explorer), there doesn't seem to be a way to delete the last move.
[Mark] You can delete next and previous moves using the context menu on any move (right click and a menu appears).
[Eric] This is not too clear in the user interface. To delete the last move, you need to navigate back a move, then right-click on that move and choose Remove Next Moves. It would be easier if you just hit the Delete button to remove the last move.

Thanks,
-Eric

[Ton]

You can paste just moves, for example:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Bd3 Nf6 6.O-O Qc7 7.Qe2 d6 8.c4 g6 9.Nc3 Bg7 10.Rd1 O-O 11.Nf3 Nc6 12.h3 Nd7 13.Be3

That pastes correctly.

Yes, the moves above paste correctly.

But these don't:
1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e3 c5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.d4 Nf6 6.Be2 a6 7.0–0 dxc4 8.Bxc4 b5 9.Bb3 Bb7 10.a3 Qb6

When I take just the first 6 moves (12 ply) it pastes OK.

I suspect if the moves have other symbols there could be an issue but please email me the text you think it should cope with and we will have a look at it.

The ability to be able to paste from other popular languages would be useful I agree provided there is no ambiguity.

I'll mail a proposal later. Will be in line with a previous feature request to be able to show localized moves instead of figurines.

[Ton]

You can paste just moves, for example:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Bd3 Nf6 6.O-O Qc7 7.Qe2 d6 8.c4 g6 9.Nc3 Bg7 10.Rd1 O-O 11.Nf3 Nc6 12.h3 Nd7 13.Be3

That pastes correctly.

Yes, the moves above paste correctly.

But these don't:
1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e3 c5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.d4 Nf6 6.Be2 a6 7.0–0 dxc4 8.Bxc4 b5 9.Bb3 Bb7 10.a3 Qb6

When I take just the first 6 moves (12 ply) it pastes OK.

I suspect if the moves have other symbols there could be an issue but please email me the text you think it should cope with and we will have a look at it.

The ability to be able to paste from other popular languages would be useful I agree provided there is no ambiguity.

Hmm, I See in my move-string, the castling is notated as zero-zero instead as upper-O - upper-O

Will ask the source of this string with which program it was created. (I suspect Fritz13)

[Mark Uniacke]

Zeros will work, the problem is the long minus used!

1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e3 c5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.d4 Nf6 6.Be2 a6 7.0-0 dxc4 8.Bxc4 b5 9.Bb3 Bb7 10.a3 Qb6
that works
but
1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e3 c5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.d4 Nf6 6.Be2 a6 7.0–0 dxc4 8.Bxc4 b5 9.Bb3 Bb7 10.a3 Qb6
does not.

My colleague is fxiing it so v1.3 will be able to read this oddity.

I will be a little surprised if Fritz 13 is producing this very none standard castling notation using zeros and long minus, maybe it is trying to work on its maths

[Ton]

My colleague is fxiing it so v1.3 will be able to read this oddity.

I will be a little surprised if Fritz 13 is producing this very none standard castling notation using zeros and long minus, maybe it is trying to work on its maths

Great to see you're strict in writing, while generous in reading.

The source of the game is Fritz13. But between that, and my paste command two email clients and the transport between them.
Maybe there's the cause of the problem.