What's New in version 1.5 - peteschaefer/jose GitHub Wiki

The most recent release was in 2006. This project has been lying dormant for almost 20 years. Sorry guys, I've been busy.

The GUI looks a bit old-fashioned in some corners, but the functionality is all there. What I like most are the editing and printing capabilities.

Now there's new stuff to come:

1. Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero bundled

  • for play and analysis
  • any other UCI-compatible engine can be plugged-in, as usual.
  • bundled Lc0 is meant for minimal hardware requirements.
    If you have a more powerful setup, you should use that one! (see [Installation Notes](Installation Notes))

2. WDL and other Leela scores

  • supports Win-Draw-Lose scores for both Leela and Stockfish
  • supports all the Leela score types (win percentage, Q, WDL_mu, etc.)
  • prints a ton of Leela diagnostics (Q,N,V, etc.)

3. Node-restricted search

  • perform engine searches with fixed time, fixed depth, fixed node count.

  • and, as before, with flexible time controls.

  • press F9 (Edit / Options), select 'Engine' tab to edit all the engine settings.

  • also have a look at the 'Opening Books' tab; you can have the engine play with, or without, Polyglot books

4. Lichess Opening Explorer

  • use the Lichess database as an online Opening Book (in addition to Polyglot opening books on your on hard disk)
  • it is not enabled by default: go to Edit, Options (F9), 'Opening Books' tab, check 'Lichess Opening Explorer'.
  • push the analysis button. During the opening phase, the button toggles between opening book and engine analysis.
  • top games are listed for popular variations. Click to download the game.
  • color transpositions are detected

5. Eval Bar and Eval Graph

6. Analysis arrows

  • show best moves while analysing (not during engine play)

7. Threat Analysis / Null Moves

You might know this feature from other chess analysis programs. Of course, it is not allowed to make a "pass" move in a regular game. But in analysis variations, it is a useful device to analyse a position from the oponent's point of view.

  • push the Threat Analysis button Threat Analysis
  • inserts a new variation with a "null" move

Thread Analysis

  • "..." indicates a skipped move, or "null" move
  • the delta icon means "with the idea", or "threatens"
  • any number of null moves may be inserted, like so:

Thread Analysis

8. "New Game from here"

  • starts a new game from the current position. This is a handy feature to play a set of training games from a specific opening variation.

9. Connect to Chessnut Air, Air+, Pro electronic boards

  • only on Windows, and only with a USB cable. Bluetooth is not yet reliably supported.
  • board orientation is detected automatically (as long as h1 is a light square ;)
  • take back allowed
  • take-take sequences detected
Service Release 1.5.1
  • improves looks on high-resolution screens
  • upgrades a lot of stuff under the hood (64-bit binaries)
Service Release 1.5.2
  • fixes database bugs
  • Repair Tool to fix crashed databases
  • better integration of Lichess Opening Explorer
  • some gui improvements: variation display, hint button, etc.
Service Pack 1.5.3
  • improves editing and printing of annotation symbols (NAGs)
  • just unzip the patch file on top of 1.5.2
Service Pack 1.5.4
  • comes with a new set of tool icons (those gifs from the 2000's have had their day ;)
Service Pack 1.5.5
  • GUI overhaul, thanks to FlatLaf.
  • customizable colors and styles. See UI Themes
  • dark mode
Service Pack 1.5.6
  • epxert Database Setup; store your data on the local network, or in the cloud.
Service Pack 1.5.7
  • 'relaunch' the Web App.
  • use TrueType fonts in html pages
  • built for Linux on Arm64
Service Pack 1.5.8 .. 1.5.10
  • ready for Lumbra's Gigabase, a 16 million games database
  • download it here
  • importing the file is a bit longish (allow for 90 minutes or more); but once you have it in your local database, searches are blazingly fast (*)
  • searching for a specific position takes around 10 seconds; which is pretty good for 16 million records, I assume.

(*) Well, most of the time. If a search is actually slow, MySQL came up with a poor query plan; we are working on it :)

Service Pack 1.5.11
  • fixes a longstanding bug in the Windows version
  • upgrade PDF printing library to Apache FOP 2.11
  • experimental and somewhat hidden: RTF file export.
    Choose File / Save As... / PDF and then replace the file suffix with, say, ChessGame .rtf
    • layout quality of RTF files is not up to par with PDF, but you can edit them
    • figurine fonts need to be installed system-wide (b/c RTF can not "embed" fonts)
Service Pack 1.5.12 .. 1.5.14
  • search for pawn structures, or pawn subsets
  • I'd like to implement more positional search features, and want to hear from you: what's useful? Please discuss.
Service Pack 1.5.15
  • auto-completion / auto-suggestion in various input fields: player, event, site, opening.
What could be next ?
  • implement position search in C++
  • game details bulk edit
  • modernizing the database backend.
    Newer versions of MySQL and MariaDB are available, but are they actually useful?
  • chapter titles when printing collections
  • Undo in the game editor
  • (simplify printing workflow?)

If you have feature ideas, or complaints, feel free to drop a comment in the Discussions section.

Bug reports go to the Issues page.

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