I'm writing a chess openings explorer and I'd love to hear your thoughts

I've taken the articles from Wikibooks:Chess Opening Theory that describe a specific opening line and created a database of openings with their wiki pages to use for my program.

The program shows a board with the starting position and each time you make a move, it brings up the wikibooks article for that opening if there is one.

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/D1bXTOA.png

Video: https://i.imgur.com/QjnLMfQ.mp4

The idea is that it'll give you a feel for the openings because you can see a pretty in-depth analysis for each opening as you play through each move.

I'm hoping this can help myself and others improve their opening skills.

Right now I'm still scraping wikibooks for the articles (have every opening up to depth 5 so far) and the GUI still has a few crucial elements missing such as board coordinates and forward and back buttons.

I was considering adding pre-calculated engine scores for each opening but I don't think that'd be of much use to anyone.

This will be completely free software and I'll be releasing a first version soon.

What are your thoughts on this? Is this something you'd be interested in?

Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

Maybe U could be interested to indicate pawn heights and integrate PSCC (pawn structure classification codes) of openings into your program ?!?

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/classification-of-hippo-hippo-openings-with-1000-master-games

Why are you reinventing the wheel?

Very cool.  Nice job.  Sure we can look in books for it, but to get it all on the screen like that is very nice.  Yeah, I think I'd be interested.

Here's a question which may complicate things: what about when one opening transitions into another?  I.e., in response to 1 d4, black plays either ...e6 or some Indian defense, and then move 4 or so plays ...d5 and suddenly the line is a Queen's Gambit Declined?

My dream for an opening explorer is one that shows rough ideas on plans and how to punish mistakes. For example, as black in the sicilian, you can go after the e4 pawn, or attack down the Queen side with the open c file, (Queen on c2, rook on c1, push the pawns). You need to beware knights on b5, don't castle too early as sometimes the black king is safest in the centre. There are always nuances but I find what I hate about some openings is I don't have a sense of my threats or plans or traps. Most opening books simply show lines, or dozens of best moves without showing why alternatives are inferior.

I agree with that last sentence!

If I may add: things like "what's the point of this opening?" help a lot, too.  For example: in the Nimzo, explaining that the battle is going to be for the e4 square.  Or for QGD: the "minority attack" on the queen side; or that white generally prefers to get his dark squared bishop out before e3; while for black For it's harder to get white squared bishop into the game.

(That said, I don't want to minimize your point -- I'm just adding another.  "Don't play x because then y" is indeed very important)

My first instinct was "why are you reinventing the wheel?" as well - but then I was shocked to see how it is and how much it makes sense. Now I'm thinking why hasn't it been done before that I've seen?!

I would say just make sure the content is high quality, professional and non-controversial. It may be a good exercise for decent players to write stuff about openings, but for something like this you really want it trustable. And you see stuff about chess floating around the internet that is so low-quality and misleading and often plain wrong. It's like how you wouldn't leave a hobbyist write an article about science to thousands of people.    

If you could add in the players/ratings/result rates next to the move, that would be great. 

You could also throw in a few example or famous games. It could be the ultimate chess study tool. It'd be hard to claim a book is superior if the contents of the book is included in the tool.  

Great ideas Uhohspeghettio1 -- And, hey, let's go totally crazy here, if you're going to throw in some games as examples, how about link to those games!

It's easy to be sitting back in the peanut gallery making such suggestions, eh?

(Sounds like it might need to be a group effort! ;-) )  Or, I guess that's what Wikibooks:Chess Opening Theory is supposed to be.  Are there links to games there?