Compatibility topics

[FreeRepublic]

Case 1, original BookUP side by side with COW. Success.
I went to http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/macos9win.html
and downloaded a Mac OS9 emulator for Windows. I now run my original BookUp files side-by-side with the modern COW. I can see my thoughts, comments, and original analysis from years past and take a fresh look with COW. I copy comments from BookUp and paste them into COW. This provides a migration path from old to new files and software.

Case 2, copying a Modern-Chess.com purchased book into COW Pro. Success. This seems to have worked perfectly, with main lines, sub-variations, and comments all in place.

Case 3, buying a 2009 Everyman chess book and uploading to COW Pro. Partial success. I bought Attacking Chess - King's Indian Defense, vols 1 and 2. I can read each in Kindle or EPub. Just books, but sharing the screen with COW and supporting copy and paste. I read the PGN into Chess Assistant, and some sub-variations were dropped. I read the CBV files into the free ChessBase reader - no problem. I read the PGN into BookUp Pro. It read the books, but some sub-variations were either dropped or garbled. I can clean these up manually by having the book (Kindle or EPub) sharing the screen with COW Pro.

Case 4, buying a new Everyman book and uploading to COW Pro. Not attempted yet.

I distinguished between case 3 and 4 because it's possible that Everyman Chess may do a better job with new eBooks than with old ones. That is just speculation at this point.

I don't know why my PGN import of a 2009 book from Everyman chess (case 3) was only a partial success. Maybe Everyman didn't to the PGN download right. Maybe PGN is not up to the challenge. Maybe CBV is the future.

CBV import would be a plus for COW Pro.

By the way, I just want to note a feature of COW Pro that I really like. I used SF 10 to analyse a key line in the Magakonov variation of the KID. I ran through a few options suggested by SF and myself and evaluated end positions. The evaluation of end positions flowed back to earlier moves. Very cool and very useful. This may be old hat for some users, but new for me. Mike - congrats!!

[FreeRepublic]

A quick note on case 3 on importing a 2009 book bought as an EBook at EverymanChess.com

I imported the CBV file into ChessBase reader. It seems to be a complete import. It seems that I can add moves and variations, BUT they are not saved!

[Bookup]

If you want me to check out the format of that Everyman PGN file, send it to me via email and I'll have a look at it.

mike at bookupmembers dot com

[FreeRepublic]

Bookup (Mac OS 9) COW Pro (Windows 10) 3.png (107.72 KiB) Viewed 25613 times

I had to adjust the resolution down a couple of times before posting at this site. So the original is much easier to read!

[MikeAtBookup]

Seeing that old Macintosh version is quite the trip down memory lane for me! I remember toiling over that version when RAM for a fat Mac was $1,000 per megabyte. (That is not a typo.)

[FreeRepublic]

Screenshot (1) - Copy 2.png (152.94 KiB) Viewed 25506 times

Everyman chess seems fully committed to publishing their books in electronic form. I recently bought the 5 volume My Great Predecessors for $33.

To the left is a page from Volume 2 in the Kindle format.To the right is the same position in COW Pro. (Note that some of the text is continued in the position that occurs after 10...h6 has been played). So far, I've only uploaded the first two volumes, played through 2 games and one game excerpt.

I was initially unable to upload the PGN files to COW. I opened the PGN/text files and looked at them. The first three or so "games" are actually a verbal introduction with no moves. I deleted them and saved the file under another name. I was then able to import the games and game fragments. COW prompted me on the game fragments and I chose to save them by both players' names. It looks like everything is working fine.

What I am doing here is similar to the time honored practice of using an actual chess book and playing out the moves on an actual chess board.
However, there are so many advantages of proceeding electronically, too many for me to elaborate upon here.

To get the picture, above, I held the Windows icon button and pressed the Print Screen (function) button. I opened the image in a paint program and reduced it to 25% of the original size. Perhaps this could have been done better using JPG instead of PNG formats, but I didn't know how.

[FreeRepublic]

I've uploaded all 5 volumes, taking care to open the text file and removing the non-game introduction to each volume before uploading the PGN games. Works great!

[FreeRepublic]

Two cases of PGN import:

I imported the recent PGN version of The King's Indian Defense, Move by Move, by Sam Collins into COW. Looks great so far!

I imported David Vigoritto's Attacking Chess The King's Indian Defense vol1. Despite the fact that it is somewhat older, it is a great resource and even better value. Still, there are occasions where the input is garbled. Enclosed is a picture. Black has to move his queen knight or lose a piece. Instead we get one correct move by the queen knight, and three mistaken moves by the king knight. If only all cases were this simple.

By the way, EPub format works just as well as Kindle, but there is a hitch. In the past I read the EPub files with Microsoft Edge. Edge has stopped supporting EPub. So the mad scramble. I'm happy to report that Adobe Digital Editions works great with EPub. This is shown on the left side of the screen.

[FreeRepublic]

It looks like the screen capture came out small. Sorry about that. Can't seem to fix it, at least not tonight.

[MikeAtBookup]

I can't make out what's going on in the last screen shot.

I may have to get one of these PGN files and try this myself.