GMTonyKosten wrote on 01/20/19 at 11:09:35:

Actually, it works OK after restarting Windows, although the notations are difficult to see - probably a question of altering the font colours.

I just tried a 'High Contrast Black' theme on my portable computer, and whereas most programs worked well, and really had white text on a black background, ChessBase 15 (and presumably older versions, too) was almost unusable - the games became invisible in the databases and also in the online search feature!

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 12/18/18 at 02:37:33:


Excellent, thanks, how did you manage to find that? If you could now find a way to alter those blue title bars ...

proustiskeen wrote on 12/17/18 at 16:43:19:
The Start menu I can deal with. I still use the command line, and can remember DOS Shell, File Explorer, etc., etc. Just another interface to get used to.

• Windows update is borked. Even when it "works" it is hellish to get through. But since I need the network, there is no choice about updating. There is, however, a choice about booting into Windows at all.
• Vista on the old netbook was slow. Windows 10 on the new laptop, with ~6x faster hardware, is if possible even slower. Laptop+lubuntu > netbook+lubuntu > netbook+vista > laptop+win10. But Vista was EOL, so I wiped it. All that extra "stuff" Windows 10 is doing? Not anything I asked it to do. Partly it is the overhead of pokey managed code, and partly it is Microsoft stealing my metered internet, along with associated CPU cycles, for their own purposes.
• Windows 10 does weird things with my legacy 32-bit executables. Sometimes out of the blue it quarantines them. I forget the exact message in the dialog. If update worked and the OS were faster, I could invest time figuring this out.

So, Linux (mostly).

proustiskeen wrote on 12/17/18 at 16:43:19:
Look at the hardware it is running on! It should be better! The Linux distros are getting better. iOS is getting better. I don't use macOS, but probably it is getting better. From my point of view, the only positive thing Microsoft has done is drive the specs for a consumer-grade laptop to the point where any box store sale item is way more than good enough for Linux.

I won't be able to look at this until after work (+8 hrs). But in one of the File menu items I mentioned (Diagram List probably), there was a dialog box for the diagram with four tabs on the left; one of those was for the header and one was for the footer, each with a checkbox to turn it off. I imagine that is what you are looking for. The default in CB14 is header off footer on, maybe CB15 has changed that.

I used to like Windows 2000, then XP even more. Vista was a step in the wrong direction. Windows 7 (at work) is okay. I hate Windows 10 (on my laptop) so much that I have given up on ChessBase.

Not 100% sure what you are looking to do. Maybe this?

• In CB14: Home | Clipboard | "Copy current position to clipboard (position + text)"
• In notepad: Paste gives just the FEN

The File menu (Save, Print, Diagram List) never did anything useful for my purposes. I work in PGN, FEN/EPD, and, when I want a PDF, in RTF.

GMTonyKosten wrote on 12/13/18 at 10:09:50:


Found another bug. If you choose to use different colors for subvariations when you print games with analysis...Chessbase 15 prints them fine. But if you save the document and reopen the file the colors you used are no longer saved and you're forced to recolor the variations all over again.

Yes, all modern program is depended on other software. I wouldn't say CB is modern. 

But I believe the CB crashes and misbehaviours are not caused by this. Only because of a flawed design and flawed code base, which is patched for every new version. The necessary redesign will be too expensive.

Of course I'm speculating. I have no insight in the CB development. But but my opinion is based on 40 years experience in the IT-development business and how old software normally is "maintained".