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Subject: Re: Ten years later: revising EPD/FEN/PGN

Author: Peter Kappler

Date: 20:03:31 09/11/03

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On September 11, 2003 at 15:13:48, Robin Smith wrote:

>On September 11, 2003 at 10:59:32, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 10, 2003 at 21:11:51, Robin Smith wrote:
>>
>>>On September 10, 2003 at 13:26:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>One thing I really dislike is resumption of moves.  IE
>>>>
>>>>23.  e3 (some comment) then 23... black's next real move.  The "..." looks
>>>>ugly.  In many old annotations, the better form 23. ... black's move makes more
>>>>sense.
>>>>
>>>>But in any case, nn... is ugly...
>>>
>>>Why? Most chess books published these days use nn... Also this is what chessbase
>>>produces when you export a game to text. Ugly or not, I think nn... has become
>>>the norm, and it takes less space.
>>
>>
>>The original intent was for the "..." to indicate "there is a move missing,
>>you need to back up to the last move actually played..."
>>
>>All the books I have use 21. ... Re7, for example.
>
>Every book by Gambit uses nn..., Everyman Chess uses nn... etc. Some of the
>modern books I have don't use a . for white moves, and therefore for a black
>move use nn ... (Cadogan, Batsford, Pergamon etc). The books I have that use nn.
>... are very old, or by small publishers like C.I.R.C. Do you have an old book
>collection?
>
>>It is easier to
>>parse.  One token (always) for the move number.  One token for a missing
>>move, one for a real move.  Rather than one token that can be a move number
>>or a move number _and_ a missing move.
>
>I think there is a big advantage to staying cosistent with what both Chessbase
>and ChessAssistant do, which is nn...  If PGN readers suddenly can't parse
>Chessbase or Chessassistant output, that seems like an even bigger problem.
>Perhaps there could be a different token for missing moves, besides ..., to fix
>the parsing problem?


I agree.  All modern books and tools use the ... convention.  Changing this now
doesn't seem like a good idea.

-Peter



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