Illeagal Moves in PGN

Greatings everyone,

Does anybody know who maintains the PGN file format?

My own search on the Internet has turned up Steven J. Edwards (sje@world.std.com) as the coordinator, but e-mails to this address get returned as unser unknown. If anybody knows who maintains the PGN standard, or how to contact him/her, please forward the information to me.

I was trying to reach the coordinator to ask if the PGN format could be extended to support games with illegal moves. In his original writeup (also available on the Internet) he said the games worth recording would not have illegal moves. In working with people playing and learning chess, I have found that recording games is an invaluable tool in improving ones game, and that illegal moves occasionally happen.

For those who don't know, illegal moves are permitted in official USCF games, if neither player catches it. In fact, only the player is permitted to call his oponent o the illegal move, and only during the game. Once the game is over the result obtained with illegal moves will stand as the official result. I believe FIDE operates similarly with regards to illegal moves.

With these rules as such, illegal moves can and do appear in official matches, and thier appearence causes headaches for me when using the common tools. (like PalView et al.)

An illegal move was played in a game at the office. You may view the game on the web page at
http://webpages.charter.net/garner/wlcl/2002/os/g17.htm The only way to get the game up, was to create two game entries in the PGN file, one for everything up to the illegal move, and one for the rest. Since they are really the same game, I want them on the same page, so any automated page generation (batch mode) to quickly throw out all the pages generates an extra page. Then the two pages must be merged, and it is a pain in general.

A possibility would be to have a numberic annotation glyph which designated an illegal move, similar to the "forced move", or, poor move" annotation glyphs. The presence of this glyph could disable the checking of legality in the move, since we know it is not legal. (a job ideally done in the PGN parse code) This would permin and mark illegal moves, which would simplify the use of the common tools for games with such moves.