COW Wish List

[MikeCrockett]

I thought it might be interesting to create a thread for discussing new ideas and desired Enhancements to Chess Openings Wizard. I'd like to start this off with a couple of my own suggestions.

1. I'd like to have the ability to multi-task the EDP analysis. As-is, analyzing one eBook at a time is too limiting.

2. I'd like to have the Export to PGN with no comments made truly functional and enhanced with other export options to control the content of the comments that are being exported. i.e. provide the ability to remove machine generated comments beginning with {PV... }

3. I'd like to have the ability to export an eBook to PGN format while at the same time preserving the results of previous EDP numerical analysis results. As-is, when exporting an eBook one loses the benefit of previous EDP work which requires recompilation when imported back into eBook format. I want to avoid wasting time in the reanalysis.

4. Consider adding David J Barnes (of University of Kent, UK) PGN Extract Utility to COW. At this writing the most current version is 17.30. I would like to see COW add a GUI interface, (similar to how EDP Chess Engine setup operates) to manipulate PGN files BEFORE importing games into COW. I would recommend using version 17.30 as it was recently enhanced to parse PGN files with Ply and Quiescent extract features. I think many COW users might find this capability extremely interesting and useful. As an FYI, I did speak to David, and he is willing (with proper credit) to make the software available for use.

The PGN Extract program can be downloaded via FTP from: ftp://ftp.cs.kent.ac.uk/pub/djb/pgn-ext ... xtract.exe

You can locate the latest release of PGN Extract and it's source code at: https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/

5. I'd like to suggest adding the following Rate Symbols evaluations: 1-0, 0-1, and 1/2-1/2 to denote the actual end of a game as opposed to using Rate Symbols +-, -+ or = which tend to imply an analytical opinion.

[MikeAtBookup]

Thanks, Mike.

David Barnes' utility sounds quite handy but it is probably beyond my pay grade to support another program.

Does the checkbox for exporting comments to PGN not suppress comments for you? I just tested it and it worked fine for me.

PGN doesn't have support for tagging positions with anything other than a comment or an Informant symbol. When exporting to PGN, one can expect that numeric assessments, certainty settings, diagram arrows and such will have no place to be stored.

I agree that converting the game result (which should appear in the game information of the final position's comment) does tend to imply an analytical opinion. In the vast majority of cases, a master resigning or agreeing to a draw is a pretty good basis for analysis though. The Informant symbols don't include anything that stands for "resign-able according to a certain master."

[MikeCrockett]

Thanks, Mike.
David Barnes' utility sounds quite handy but it is probably beyond my pay grade to support another program.

Mike, it certainly wasn't above your pay grade to supply the Stockfish and Crafty chess engines (as 3rd party written software) as part of your default COW install along with a GUI interface that permitted tuning those engines with hash table parameters. Doing so gave COW a powerful enhancement with backsolving capabilities.

By the same token, adding David's PGN Export software would provide a powerful extension to COW's PGN editing capabilities for those of us who want such capabilities. I think you should reconsider how this software could be a "bolt-on" enhancement that makes COW a better, more versatile tool for the end-user. I don't think it would cost you anything, as David's software used the GNU public domain license which is similar to how Stockfish and Crafty are distributed.

PGN doesn't have support for tagging positions with anything other than a comment or an Informant symbol. When exporting to PGN, one can expect that numeric assessments, certainty settings, diagram arrows and such will have no place to be stored.

Mike, You certainly know the internal workings of your software better than I do, so any suggestions I make could easily be dismissed. But, with that said, with a little thought put into it, I'm sure you could take advantage of the PGN comments themselves to store the EDP settings as an XML document. For example, at the end of each variation, on each leaf node, you could append a short PGN comment - something like:

{<EDP><PV>"0.5"</PV></EDP>}

Almost all PGN parsers would ignore the comments between brackets { } but COW could be modified to parse any comment beginning with <EDP> as an instruction to restore the leaf node position into the eBook with a specific PV value of "0.5". Once the eBook was reconstructed, using the back solving function, the eBook would be fully restored to it's original settings without needing to reanalyze the entire eBook.

This would be a significant time-saver by eliminating the need to rerun EDP computer analysis on already known variations.

For example, I recently had to rebuild an eBook with 77,625 position (leaf nodes). At 15 seconds per position, that worked out to about 13.4 days to rebuild the EDP analysis. That would not have been necessary if the PGN Export from COW had trapped the original EDP settings. I could have spent those 13 days using COW to explore other opening books looking for opening novelties and ideas that would have been more meaningful.

[Bogg]

Mike:

An idea for the wish list: Allow comments on moves, perhaps by hovering over the candidate. COW's comment area only provides good support for comments on the position which can be stretched into before move comments. I think this because each position in COW can have multiple parents.

I probably made that about as clear as mud. If so shout out and I will try again.

Bogg

[FreeRepublic]

Enhancements:

1. Flip board icon
2. Preceding and/or following text for imported comments, e.g. author's name
3. Set default Window and Pane size
4. Inherit color codes forward and/or back. This would be similar to backsolve.
5. More options for color codes:
A) additional colors
B) Additional symbols (square, #)
6. Bring back the Game menu from Bookup.
7. Improved import of Everyman book files (CBV or PGN)

Bug fix
Find Novelties. This resulted in named positions with the board mirrored. (See "Confused about EPD files" July 26th, 2022).

[Albert Schenning]

My most important wish would be that COW stored not only the numeric value but also the depth into the database. Then you could be able to only export positions with a depth less then .... and do a new EPD-analysis on these positions. That way the depth of the analysis would only increase in the database.

My base now has depth values of 25 and higher but i would have to calculate all positions again to get the analysis deeper. Seems like the option i propose could safe a lot off engine time.

greetings,
Albert Schenning