Konstriktor wrote on 12/04/11 at 19:09:25:
My preference is for THE e+ chess app.
@andres I appreciate that you check out this forum. But don't take the criticism too hard.
Your product has good sides, one of them is that you can play through your own moves when going through a variation.
One gripe with smartchess is that when you play through some moves the annotation disappears. This makes the game hard to follow.
Another point which can be better is that you have to go through a lot of pages when going through a game. Combined with the point above is that you miss the big picture of the game.
What I personally would like to see is an app which is a mix between your smartchessapp and the everymanchessviewer. The everymanchessviewer has as a pro that you can see the entire game with annotations.
The e+app also has this possibility of seeing the whole game or text.
You cannot go through a variation if you want, but I don't find that too bothersome.
The ipad chess apps out there are still not perfect.
I would just like to see an app which
1.can read pgn with annotations and variations.
2. Allows you to add variations and annotations and save this in a file on your ipad.
If these two can be implemented in an app I think you will have a simple winner.
Hi,
Good points. That is how we can work together to make a better app. Because of Slates previous comment, we are adding Flip Board in the next Update.
Also the following:
1. We will keep text to linger in the text screen window just like in the book as you play through the nested line.
2. The actual games of the game will be in bold just like in the book.
3. However, we will keep our approach of only showing the relevant text and not the entire book so the the burden of sifting through the embedded prose is removed from the user.
4. The only time a text is allowed to stay on the screen is when it is has relevant commentary to the a series of moves on that page.
5. With regards to the handling of pgn files, the games in the Games Collections is already in pgn format, which means we already have a stable pgn reader. We are adding Start Position, End Position and Autoplay in the next update. We are still working on recursive game annotations. We are almost there but not quite so to get it part of the update. It will just be a matter of time before most apps will be able to do it.
6. I am a consumer of this Apps too so I know what we all want. We will get there eventually.
7. Once we have a stronger engine, you will be able to call an analysis module in Book view.
But one thing is encouraging that Slates is willing to pay for functionality. I think most consumers would and it is a good thing.
Slates, I am not taking these criticisms "too hard." I am actually thankful for them. If you noticed, we changed the way we implement the nested lines largely because of your comment earlier. And we heartily agreed with you. Allowing certain texts or a nested line to linger while it is being played through is again a response to your comment.
While e+ has its strengths, we still believe that by adding the lingering text, our presentation scheme is by far the best approach when it comes to the enjoyment, delivery and consumption of chess content.
I very much welcome the arrival of e+ because it is vindicating my vision. If you only know the untold story behind it and SmartChess!, you will see my point. It will someday become part of chess lore. For now, I am happy that it is out there and chess content consumers have now more choices.
Best regards,
Andres