Macintosh Chess Database

DrRobertJr I'm so glad I"m not hte only one that finds that program unusable!

Interesting. I had never heard of ChessX before. Indeed it seems highly preferable to use something like that as a starting point, rather than re-inventing the wheel for the umptieth time.

Note, however, this is not the only available choice, and actually seems in a quite early stage of development. For instance, when I look on the features page, ChessX does't seem to currently implement much more functionality than XBoard, where database functionality is merely a 'side dish'. And SCID of course is an already mature database application.

To be fair, however, both xboard and scid have horrible UI's. Neither presents a modern starting point which comes close to taking advantage of MacOS UI features. ChessX is at least a bit more robust in that area, though being QT based isn't really ideal either.

Well, as I said, I have no Mac, so I have no idea what features MacOS offers that makes it so different from Linux. It is true that XBoard is not a native Mac application, but has to be run through the X-server. To my un-aided eye it does not look very different from ChessX, though. I have seen Qt applications on Windows, and the menu dialogs of those did not look very different in style from those of XBoard. Just the usual text edits, spin controls, checkboxes, comboboxes, radio buttons and stuff like that. But perhaps I care more about functionality than about how 'flashy' it looks.

But in any case, making a native MacOS front-end for XBoard would solve all that, and would IMO be a very worthwile endeavor. It would still be an order of magnitude less work than building a GUI from scratch, as the entire back-end code could be kept. And most of the complexity of the XBoard UI has been moved to the back-end, so it could be shared with WinBoard.

I have got in touch with the people at Rybka, and they are willing to offer us some help in the engine field: Rybka has offered to create a liscensing agreement in the future!

A licensing agreement for vaporware?! You have a real future at Microsoft!

What do you mean by vaporware? I believe Rybka has been published to allow users (with money).

The chessdatabase being proposed here doesn't even exist as a documented feature set, let alone as any code. That's vaporware.

You're really putting the cart before the horse :) 

Exachess works well. Macs are perhaps even prevalent in Australia and the program was developed well.

The reasons that the Mac version of ChessBase didn't catch on were that Macs were less prevalent then (they are more common today, particularly among students) and because the software was notoriously buggy (crashed a lot.)

I do not frequently use a Mac, but have recommended ExaChess to folks and they find it does the job for them.

I really don't want to derail this thread, but that is simply not true. OS market shares are much the same as in other English-speaking countries, with a slightly higher proportion of Linux/other users which is probably an artefact of the relatively small population.

Thanks. I had meant to write that Macs are perhaps even more prevalent (than in the U.S.) - this was a brain cramp leaving out the word "more" which entirely changed my meaning of course. I had originally gotten this impression just by reading various (Australian related) threads.

Going back and checking some actual sources, Mac OS (not including iOS) is about 5% more prevalent in Australia than the U.S. For example, see http://www.netmarketshare.com/

Ah, I thought the wording was weird.

ChessX has made a lot of improvements recently although they don't show up in the main website executables yet. The improvements are in the source though.  I have just posted the current build on the macintosh to

https://www.box.com/chessx

ChessX is an extremely good base to develop from. It is based on QT so it compiles to native code on all three major desktop operating systems. It has an extremely nice user interface, and most important it has a well designed set of base classes. Currently there are a small group of programmers who are working on it, including myself, and more are always welcome. If you are not a programmer we can always use more testers.

Stockfish is good enough for all but the top professionals.

A database is simply that - a database. Isn't there a way to port existing chess databases to a mac-based GUI using Stockfish as the engine?

I have posted the current build of chessx for the macintosh at www.box.com/chessx try it out. It has a nice user interface and works with pgn files. I have also posted current versions of stockfish,critter, and komodo 3, which are all extremely strong chess engines which are freely available for the Mac. All three of these are very comparable, if not stronger than Rybka. Being based on QT, which acts as a layer on top of the Cocoa UI, the ChessX UI on the Macintosh looks like a native Cocoa application. Its   current weaknesses are still a lack of features and perhaps some PGN parsing inefficiencies all of which are curable.

Question -- why would someone go get a current build from a box.com drop off instead of from an official site. 

Just as someone who has a passing interest in computer security, this is a really bad idea and a great way to get spyware or other nefarious code onto one's computer. 

Answer to KingPatzer

The official ChessX downloads at http://chessx.sourceforge.net/ are unfortunately very out of date, which is why I am providing the www.box.com/chessx builds. If downloading from that site bothers you, you can/should build the latest source from the subversion repository at

svn co http://chessx.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/chessx/trunk chessx

and you will have the same functionality which I am providing as a convenience. I understand your concern however and I have just posted a proposal at the chessx developer forum to come out with an offical release ASAP.

I think I have read most of the comments here, and I haven't noticed a mention of "Scid vs Mac".  It is the Mac version of "Scid vs PC", which is a usability and bug-fix fork of SCID.

I don't fully understand all the arguments here, and I am not an intense user of chess databases, but I just wanted to mention it.

http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/

Amy