Compatibility topics

[FreeRepublic]

Perhaps I have focused excessively on older Everyman titles that did not fully import into COW. I would like to note some successes:

Everything from Modern-Chess
Everything from ChessPublishing
Everything from Chess Assistant
Everything from Chess Informant
Everything from Chessgames
Recent titles from Everyman Chess, to include Panov-Botvinnik Attack: Move by Move, and Queen's Gambit Declined: Vienna Variation.

Happy Easter everyone!

[FreeRepublic]

I recently subscribed to ChessGames.com. It's a reasonably priced source of games in PGN format, only $25 a year with a three year membership. I am currently interested in the Yugoslav variation in the fiancheto King's Indian defense, ECO E65-E66. I downloaded 1134 games and used them to create a Chess Opening Wizard E-Book.

I previously bought the Kindle version of Bologan's book on the King's Indian Defense. It can share the screen with COW, providing a fairly easy way to play through his book with all the benefits that COW has to offer.

I took a screenshot of Bologan's Kindle Book and the COW eBook side by side. Unfortunately the file size of the screenshot is too large to import below.

[FreeRepublic]

Sometimes I want to copy and paste text from a program into COW. For example, a book may make a comment after move and I want that comment in my COW file.

I can copy text from the following programs, and paste them into COW:

Kindle
Adobe Digital Editions
ChessBase
Chessable

This does not work with Forward Chess.

[FreeRepublic]

titles from Everyman Chess

I recently took another look at The King's Indian Defense Move by Move by Sam Collins. The PGN imported into COW without a hitch. Opening the book in EPUB format using Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) works well, with a nice looking display of the book which supports copy and paste. Resizing each window to half the width of the screen enables me to have both the book and the COW Ebook side by side. If I'm uncertain whether a comment like "This move" refers to a White or Black move, I can look at the ADE version and see. Works great!

The older Attacking Chess, the King's Indian does not import well into COW. The work around is to get a robust game collection and make a COW Ebook. Examples are games from ChessPublishing (annotated), Chess informant, Chess Assistant, Chessgames, or The Week in Chess. Open Attacking Chess, the King's Indian as a Kindle or ADE file. Comments can be copied from the Ebook and pasted into COW.

Modern-Chess has a new work, in two volumes, on the King's Indian Defense by Cheparinov. From time to time, they have significant sales. From past experience, I am confident their PGN will import well into COW. One can go online to see a representation of the book adjusting window width for a side by side view.

COW Ebooks as described above can be merged immediately or at a later date. I like to Copy Book, analyze in the copy and save my analysis as a game (PGN). I can then import the pgn to the original file marking all new moves in red.

With red reserved for analysis, I have green and yellow to designate two books. However, with three books, I'm challenged to give attribution! It can be a challenge to attribute text to one author or another. However, one can usually bring up a book for confirmation. This book could be Kindle, EPUB (ADE), online, or even a physical book.

[FreeRepublic]

One can go online to see a representation of the book adjusting window width for a side by side view.

This does not quite work that way for modern-chess. Rather than reduce the width of their on-line book representation in half, I place the window on the left and move half the window off screen. Works too.

[FreeRepublic]

Chessable:

I bought my first Chessable product. I already have a COW eBook on that opening. I want to augment my COW book with information contained in Chessable. Chessable does not have a PGN export command, so a quick automated "Export PGN" then "Import PGN" is out.

My computer is running Windows 11 and has built-in window (pane) management. I select at 60/40 display. Chessable takes up 60% of the screen and is fully functionable at that size. I size my COW eBook in the 40% part of the screen. To augment my COW ebook, I play through the moves from Chessable, much as I might if were working from a book (paper, kindle, ADE). I simply copy and paste comments. I make a point of identifying the source "CB: xxx." It is a bit slow, but it was always the idea to play through the moves anyway.

The preceding approach works well when I am adding a few moves, here and there. I manually add a color code, yellow in this case, to the new moves.

Right now, I'm adding a new variation not covered in the initial repertoire. There are some extra steps required to get color codes right, but I think it's worth it. Rather than work with my COW book directly, I am working with a blank COW book. I am then able to use the command "Clear color codes" to set all color codes to yellow. Later, I wll add the newly constructed ebook to my existing eBook.

A possible enhancement would be the ability to automatically add a color code from node to node (leaf to leaf?). For example, one could designate a color code from a particular position to the end of the variation and have all intermediate moves colorized appropriately.