chessdb(6)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so this is the chessdb(6) man page, and the program it's about is chessd — a chess database. yes bestie, the NAME line says chessd and the rest of the page says chessdb, that's just how it is, we don't ask questions 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

chessdb [-f -xe -xs -xt] [file...]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so chessdb is a chess database, and it's very similar to ChessBase — except it's free, open-source, and it runs on Windows, UNIX, Mac OS X, Linux and various other UNIX-like systems. it's giving "works literally everywhere" main character energy 🔥 there are translations of the text into numerous languages too, so she's multilingual, periodt.

now, a UNIX manual page is not an ideal way to convey information about something as complex as chessdb, so this man page does not try to document chessdb fully — no cap, it says so itself. the online tutorial at http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ is the best source of information. this man page just documents command line parameters and options. that's it, that's the job 🫶

if present on the command line, chessdb reads one or more files, which can be either standard PGN files (.pgn or .PGN) or databases in chessdb format — and a chessdb-format database is actually 3 files, with the extensions .si3, .sg3 and .sn3. three files for one database, she's extra like that 💀

by default, the chessdb makefile installs chessdb to sral, with the main executable being /usr/local/bin/chessdb. auxiliary files are installed in /usr/local/share/chessdb/ 📁

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

the following options are supported:

• -f — fast start, with no tablebases, spellcheck or ECO files loaded. she woke up and chose speed ⚡
• -xe — do not load the ECO database file chessdb.eco. honestly this will not save much time, since the file is pretty fast to load anyway 🙈
• -xs — do not load the spellcheck file (either ratings.ssp or spelling.ssp). if the rating file (ratings.ssp) exists, this will save a lot of time on slower computers, because that file is very large 😭

ok so quick vibe check: -xt shows up in the synopsis up top but this page doesn't describe it. not me pointing it out, just saying — the tutorial is right there, iykyk 🦋

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🎀 OPERANDS 🎀

the following operands are supported:

• file — a path name of the file(s) to be loaded when chessdb starts. yes, plural, you can absolutely slide more than one in there ✨

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌈

none are used. literally none. zero. the environment is not invited to this party 🙅‍♀️

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⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

the following exit values are returned:

• 0 — normal exit.
• >0 — an error occurred. something went wrong bestie, go read the output 😭

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🦋 FILES 🦋

/usr/local/share/chessdb/spelling.ssp

spellcheck file, which has spellings of players, events, site names and rounds, but no rating of players. later versions of this file, when available, are produced by Franz Nagl, email e4c5@aon.at and may be found at xxx. at the time of writing (Jan 2007), the last version of the file was dated xxx. yes, xxx — that's what the page says, don't come for me 💀

/usr/local/share/chessdb/ratings.ssp

like the spellcheck file spelling.ssp, the file ratings.ssp has spellings of players, events, site names and rounds. in addition to that, it has "%Elo" lines containing FIDE Elo rating information 👑 the Elo data was apparently automatically generated from Anjo Anjewierden's data at http://www.anjo.demon.nl/. later versions of this file, when available, are produced by Franz Nagl, email e4c5@aon.at and may be found at xxx. at the time of writing (Jan 2007), the latest version of the file is dated 2007-12-29 and has spellings of 81927 players, 804 sites and 20 rounds. iconic numbers, honestly 📊

/usr/local/share/chessdb/chessdb.eco

this file is used to classify games with an ECO number. it supports the 500 ECO codes (A00 to E99) but also has an extended set of ECO codes with the addition of a letter a to z, which allows for more detailed information to be used. note: the extended codes are not part of the ECO standard and are not used by programs other than Scid and ChessDB. so they are not portable — take them to another program and they will simply not slay 🚫

$HOME/.chessdb/config/options.dat

this file stores information about the user's preferences, which includes their language choice, directories where files such as spelling.ssp, ratings.ssp, chessdb.eco are found, etc. the file must remain in a Tcl format — do not go reformatting it, bestie, hands off 🙏

$HOME/.chessdb/config/twic/start-from.txt

this file stores information about the last zip file downloaded from the TWIC web site. if the last downloaded was N, then -start-from.txt will be N+1, so the program tries to download the next one it has not got. she keeps track so you don't have to 🧚

$HOME/.chessdb/config/twic/version.txt

this file does not come with ChessDB, but is created from a file stored on the Sourceforge web site at http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/tutorial/version.txt which contains information about the current version of ChessDB as well as the latest stable release, and the dates of those releases. this can be used to check that the version of ChessDB in use is the latest available ✅ it is expected to later add support for finding changes between the version in use and the current version, but this is not yet implemented, as of ChessDB-6.6.12-beta-1. future update energy, but not today 🌱

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💀 BUGS 💀

the startup screen which displays when chessdb loads starts in English. this can't be changed before the options file is loaded, since the user's language choice is not known yet. and since this screen indicates whether or not the options file is loaded, it's a difficult bug to cure. like, genuinely sticky 😭

when games are annotated by a chess engine, the last move of the game is not annotated. so a blunder which leads to someone resigning before their opponent has moved will not be annotated. the engine simply does not see the final dramatic moment, and honestly? tragic 🎭

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

cheessdbpgn(1), chessdblet(1), scmerge(1), xxx(6), tcchessdb(5), tkchessdb(5), pgnchessdb(6), sc_tree(6)

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aaaand that's the page!! 💜 this was the chessdb(6) manual, dated 28 Jan 2007 — yeah, she's vintage, she's a little retro, and she still ate. mwah 🫶🎀