If you want to start with a FEN and play against the computer, you can do that on this site (and others.) https://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor
I want guidance re. potential to embed SCID vs PC into my website.
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Thank you for this suggestion.
I don't want to start with a fen. I want the students to be able to run Scid vs PC so they can enter their moves from their ScoreSheets, save the file as a pgn after filling in their names, etc., and email the file to me soI can add their game to our online database. The only thing close to this that I have found is an external website apronus.com. Bureaucratic restrictions prevent me from loading Scid vs PC directly into into our school computers.
If I give them or lend them USB thumbdrives to run Scid, they lose the thumbdrives or forget to bring them to school or to return them after using them.
I have been a volunteer public school chess coach for about 15 years. I now work in a Texas Independent School District, with inner-city chess clubs at a middle school (grades 6-8) and a high school (grades 9-12). I also maintain a low-profile club website "http://sbranch.org" that covers a number of chess issues for both clubs. I am seeking a means to embed a program that will allow my students to access the website easily and use an engine such as Stockfish to play against them whenever they load a FEN or a PGN file. SCID vs PC with Stockfish comes very close to meeting that requirement, except for the problem that the school district will not permit our clubs from loading any external programs (such as SCID vs PC) into the computers in these schools. However, my website is not blocked (even though many reputable websites such as YouTube and maybe even chess.com are blocked).
The fact that SCID vs PC is an open-source program suggests that if I were perhaps an appropriate computer whiz (or if I could obtain some pro bono assistance from someone who is), I (he, she, we) might be able to embed SCID vs PC into our website to bypass School District bureaucratic interference. Then any student could easily hit a link on our website, load a FEN or PDF file, and activate Stockfish to play out a game.
So far, my main perceived 'defect' with Stockfish is that even if I constrain the engine to think for a maximum of one or two seconds, it still responds sluggishly (e.g., waits 15 to 30 seconds to respond with a move (if at all), even if there is only one legal move on the board, which drives me bananas. I presume that a settings tweak might alleviate that problem.
I want to achieve the following goal: Embed SCID for PC into my website so that a student can hit a particular link that loads a FEN or a PGN file, and launches Stockfish to play promptly as the student's opponent.
Here's a (messed up) example:
[Event "Openings"]
[Site "Tasby"]
[Date "2016.11.12"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Stockfish"]
[Black "Student"]
[Result "*"]
1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 g6 3.Bc4 d6 4.Qf3
*
In this example (with an unresolved error) I wanted Stockfish (AS WHITE) to TRY to sucker Student (Black) into an immediate [M5] ; i.e., the student needs to ward off Stockfish response 5.Qxf7#.
I obviously have the problem set up completely wrong because I cannot get SCID vs PC to automatically walk through to White's fourth move. And even if I step through White's fourth move manually I cannot then successfully activate Stockfish AS WHITE and wait for Student to move. But that should be straightforward with a little effort.
Can someone proficient with SCID vs PC and Stockfish help me try to accomplish my goal or offer me any useful suggestions? Thanks in advance for any assistance. I am an ancient (77-yr old) retired engineer trying to help some great kids learn to play chess instead of Angry Birds I am not a code geek.