I have a question about SCID vs PC, and perhaps you can answer:
How does one evaluate a position, in SCIDvsPC? I don't want to analyse, I only want to know if white is winning (or not) in a certain position. How should I do that?
Scid vs. PC version 4.8
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staddum, I first noticed this question in the scid vs pc topic, and I tried to answer it there.
MrEd, I'm a big Scid fan too, I hardly comment in your posts, but I read all of them, keep it up, ok?
qixel, rooperi, thanks for the kind words. I appreciate them.
I will keep it up. I enjoy helping others and answering questions in forums, not only here but on other sites as well.
Over time, I expect to add much content to my new Scid vs PC tribute page. I've really become a big fan of the program... and I suppose coming from me that says a lot, since that's what I like to do... download, test, and evaluate programs.
I've been doing some of this for so long, (I've had my own website for almost 15 years already) that sometimes it's easy to forget that others aren't as familiar with engines, interfaces, etc. So I hope some of my answers aren't too technical, and don't assume too much.
If you follow any of my posts, you know I've become a big fan of Scid vs. PC. It appears version 4.8 is now available.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/
There seems to be a bunch of changes since version 4.7.
4.8 (August 12, 2012)
General
Drag and Drop file open(s) on Windows and Unix
Custom background images (jpegs, gifs and pngs)
Random sort pgn feature.
Crosstable now have +/-/= subtotals
(and Player Stats format changed from +/=/- to +/-/=).
General PGN search has ignore case option
Board Search gets its combobox updated when DBs are opened and closed.
Save game before PGN Import
Save game: enable the use of 'prev game tags' for existing games. This allows easy addition of the same tags to consecutive existing games.
Remove the 'Scid: ' prefix from several window titles
Update some translations
Show Linux version/distro in the startup window.
Add a patch to make toolbar buttons raise only (instead of toggle open/shut)
Add a patch for Chess960 support (from Ben Hague). Unfinished
Analysis
UCI: properly handle UCI buttons. Previously they were invoked at every engine restart.
Right clicking 'Add Var' button adds Engine Score comment only.
Replace ponder on/off with hard/easy for xboard engines
Super quick engine infos can happen before Scid's PV is inited properly. So we have to default to PV = 1
Allow xboard engines to use lowercase 'b' for bishop promotion (eg a7b8b)
Don't send an erroneous 'isready' (with 'uci') to quiet analysis engines
Right clicking the widget allows to disable line wrapping
Don't add a line to analysis history if moves are null
Tree
Move ECO stats to the end of line.
Several Mask refinements - notably Searches are much more readable and previously clicking on searched lines didn't work
Fix up minor bugs about castling moves (OO, O-O, O-O-O)
Computer Tournament
Computer Tournament Book feature
Dont' kill tournament if engine crashes.
Only pack the first 10 engine combos (which allows for big tournaments)
Fix up Xboard time/move command order. Xboard engines should behave much better.
Various other tweaks
Gamelist
Show altered games in red.
Control-wheelmouse scrolls up/down one page.
Switcher now has text on two lines (if icons are shown).
FICS
Digital clocks now (optionally) on the main board
Better integration of FICS "examine" and "observe" features
FICS has its own options menu
bind F9 to xtell instead of tell.
Change the move.wav sound from tick-tock to a short click.
OS X
Filter graph bugfix
Material Search properly shows the little buttons
Copy and Paste text from disabled OSX text widgets (engines, help, gameinfo)
Buttons 2 and 3 are swapped around
General Bugs
Work arounds for wish 8.5.12 and 8.5.8 issues
Analysis logs can badly break autoscroll, so use normal frames and scrollbars.
Handle PGN parsing of unspecified promotions (b8 becomes b8=Q , for eg).