I'm noticing crashes with 4.3 when doing analysis. Am not positive it's caused by scid - but there is a correlation.

Daniel wrote on 03/20/11 at 22:08:35:

I am satsified with SCID 4.2.2. on my Mac - as I can't use Chessbase it's really a very good alternative.

But I still wonder why version 4.3. does not work - anyone any idea? 

I still have to use SCID 4.2.2 because the version 4.3 just crushes at starting - Mac with Intel core, OS 10.5.8

Anybody has an idea why this is so?

Quote:


I wish that information would be listed on the website. The changes are indeed extensive. Pasting from the changelog (minus the myriad bugfixes):

scid-4.3
==========
- Mark the Repertoir Editor deprecated, guide users to Masks
- Improvements
     * documentation for opening trainer (thanks to Dale Hards)
     * Some of the programs icons based on GNOME Stock Icons in case png-support is available
     * Refresh icons for Database switcher (Thanks to Peter Wong and Steven)
     * Some defaults of Scids empty config
     * Gamelist: show delete-flag to the very left of the list by default
     * Taller information field (Thanks ot Milan Zamazal and Gerd Lorscheid)
     * Replace some buttons in help by proper img tags
     * Bring Best games / tree graph to front if they exist and the button is pressed again
     * Toggle autoplay mode was mapped to Ctrl-z instead of Ctrl-Z so it confliced with undo
     * Speed improvement for game copy operation
     * New checking option for games consistency
     * Improve proportions of USCF piece set
     * HTML export
         - Move nags rendered in same font as the move
         - Diagram immediately follows the move (order of diagram and comments are swapped), which is a more common scenario
         - Indentation of variations enhanced by putting them in indented div sections
         - Current move hightlighting, board and diagram colors follow css style definition
         - Cursor key navigation works in IE
         - Cursor left key navigation works the same way backwards as right works its way forwards, i.e. skipping variations
         - Dotted move numbers for black moves in a main line are also applied following a diagram and a variation.
     * Annotation/analysis
         - Added engine thinking time to annotator string
         - Stop engine at end of annotation
         - UCI engine: Added notion of length of mating line to cp score (shorter is better)
         - Added annotation at end of variations
         - Added depth to variation scores
         - Added option to score all moves (also those which are not annotated)
         - Removed option to annotate only not-best-moves, as it is no longer usefull now
           all-moves does no longer produce lines starting with the played move
         - Increased maximum engine thinking time to 999 [sec]
         - Removed the blunder signature in the annotation (as we cannot tell how sharp the threshold is)
         - Added variation times in multi-pv mode
         - If game just follows book till some book end, last book move does not need analysis.
         - Blunder-check annotation spots faster mates, regardless of threshold.
         - Annotation adds - in all modes - a '?!' nag if the main move is significantly (informant value)
           stronger than the best move the engine expected.
            - Finish game now allows for a shootout between two UCI engines
                 if two engines are opened.
     * PGN import always opened in Scids bin folder, now use last dir instead and store it.
     * Mask files folder location gets stored and reused
- New features:
     * Correspondence Chess:
           - Allow observation of games on ICCF webchess
           - Add connector file support to configure game relay from the internet
           - Make dialogues etc. theme aware for Tk 8.5
           - Allow for postal games by the Mode "Postal" header. Those
             games are not touched but show up in the cc window provided a
             suitable PGN is present in the Inbox. (ICCF might generate this
             in case of mixed events.)
           - Add two new headers: WhiteAddress / BlackAddress to hold
             postal adresses for eventual postcard printing
           - Read additional header tags from the database and thus allow
             to show e.g. flags if Black/WhiteCountry header is set even if
             those tags are not provided by the games in the Inbox
           - Rewrite of some parts of the update procedure
           - Code cleanup and performance improvements
           - Allow scrolling of the CC gamelist by keyboard (PgUp/PgDn, Up/Down)
     * Show WhiteCountry/BlackCountry in game info area
     * Initial support for bibliographic links in PGN headers:
           - A BibTeX-file either named $scidDataDir/Bookshelf.bib or named and located along with the current database is parsed as bibliographic input
           - Header lines of the form [Bib "<bibtexkey>, <addinfo> ; <bibtexkey>, <addinfo>"]
             open a new window with bibliographic reference; <addinfo> e.g. No.27 p.85.
           - if Bib-header exists a new link shows up in game info area
           - To handle the bibliographic database 3rd party tools can be
             used. A valuabe free, open source  solution might be
             http://jabref.sf.net (or any other bibliography tool for BibTeX)
     * Best games list:
           - For annotated games (NAGs, Comments, Variations) show an A in the list
           - For flagged games show up to 4 flag chars or the number of
             flags if there are more than 4 flags present.
           - Obeys a filter set by header search
     * Allow to change the board without waiting for tree windows to complete search. (Thanks to Fulvio)
     * Rework ID linking code
           - Tags, resolverurls, icons etc. are read from a config file.
             This eases up future extensions of IDs known by Scid
           - If no config exists create a default one handling FIDE, ICCF, DSB, BCF, VIAF, SM
           - Each ID has to link to a unique page, multiple links are not possible
           - PND is still special as it is used to link to various complex
             locations like Wikipedia (including NLS) and SeeAlso. This is
             still treated internally
     * Comment editor
            - now opens by clicking the comment in game info area
            - Make board toggable by either alt-b or button and save its state
            - recognises Ctrl-A for adding a new variation => easy addition for pre move comments
            - Alt-Left/Alt-Right now go one move backward/forward
            - Map Alt-N to switch between NAG- and text entry
            - Autostore comments as soon as the window looses focus
         - Add Ctrl-N shortcut to Edit window to call NAG values help
         - Add "Open Comment editor" to PGN context menu
         - Add common NAG symbols to PGN context menu (Thanks to G. Lorscheid)
            - Comment editor can be opend by the small light bulb button in
              the toolbar. This button also signifies if the game already
              contains commentary in the current position and if so, shows
              them in a tooltip. Technical commentaries (e.g. [%.*] are
              ingored.
            - Update board in comment editor with current position while
              the comment editor is left open. (Joost t' Haart)
     * Allow suppression of Abort/Adjourn/Draw/Take back requests/offers (thanks to Jose Joao Morais)
     * Piece sets
       - Bauhaus style piece set (thanks to Sandra Snan)
       - Fix scaling issue in USCF set
     * Browse window
       - Allow scaling by +/- keys and Ctrl-Mouse wheel
       - Use mouse wheel to go through the game
     * Header searches
       - Header searches with open trees now act as a filter, that is
       they now restrict the games displayed in Best Games and Game
       list. In other words if a header search was performed it's
       results are no longer reset by the Tree searches. Tree statistics
       however are still calculated for teh full database.  (Thanks to
       Gerd Lorscheid)
       - Annotators are now searchable (Thanks to Gerd Lorscheid)
       - Easy way to search for all games that are annotated by either
       NAGs, comments or variations. (Thanks to Gerd Lorscheid)
     * API Changes:
           - ::tooltip::UnSet to remove a tooltip + message
           - sc_filter clean: unset both db and tree filter

Scid 4.3 was released (Feb, 2011)!
http://scid.sourceforge.net/download.html

Sandman wrote on 01/02/11 at 16:05:16:


The right-most search icon is the Search Pattern icon. It looks like a pawn and magnifying glass. It lets you search for common patterns and set up your own to look for. I don't have much experience with it, but I'm sure it's the closest thing to what you're looking for.

A quick bump to say that a new major version (SCID 4.0) has just been released. Hopefully this doesn't constitute blatant advertisement. Also, the changelog doesn't seem to be on the sourceforge site, so I'll paste what the author had to say:

"Hi,

Scid 4.0 has been released. Main changes are :
- use of a new base format, so very long games with plenty of comments and variations are now correctly handled. The user can also use custom flags to mark games. When a si3 base (Scid 3.x format) is opened with this version it is automatically converted to the new format (which takes about 10 sec for a 3 million games database).
- many bug fixes
- faster input / output (some operations are 3 times faster)

It can be downloaded from http://scid.sourceforge.net

For some more details, here is an extract of the changelog (stripping bug fixes and others) :

* New base format :
- import games with a length (encoded) up to 128 kB
- 6 new user customizable flags
- any base opened in version 3 will be automatically converted to new format in a few seconds (.si3 file is converted to .si4 and then removed, .sg3 and sn3 files are renamed respectively to .sg4 and .sn4)
* NAG support : add symbolic NAGs using UTF-8 symbols
* Search position : if the search is done in a refrerence base (not the current one), don't switch to it if the result returns no game
* Tree mask :
- added a sub-menu for searching positions in a mask depending upon various criteria (comments, NAG, color, etc.)
- added a sub-menu for displaying the Mask content in a tree form
- remember the most recent opened masks
- new moves can be added to a mask even if there is no corresponding position in the Tree
* FICS :
- save options for finding opponents based on login
- display forecast of win / draw / loss score (in fact sends assess when creating the game)
* Highlight last move played (switchable and configurable in options menu)
* added a new call "sc_game info nextMoveUCI"
* new feature to review game. The user guesses moves played from one side of a played game.
* First version of VIAF/PND support for hooking up Wikipedia et al.
* Correspondence Chess:
- Sorting of the gamelist by various criteria like own clock, opponent clock (Xfcc only)
- Do not show games where the player does not have the move (Xfcc only)
- Add GUI to set sort criteria
- Implement sort by "time per move till next TC" including the next timing period (Suggested by Dhanish)
- Add Edit menu to cc window

Please report remarks or comments here or to scid-users mailing list (no PM).

Pascal Georges"

Matemax wrote on 08/25/09 at 18:04:19:


The UCI version is different from the version you actually play against, which is something I do remember missing when I first tried it. 
If you have the right version then starting it from the command line should do nothing obvious until you type uci <return> when you should get a setup string.