player = "name:title:elo:country[:perfelo]"
default: none

The player command is used to provide player specific information to Palview through the INI file itself. Unlike other INI options, the player command can be repeated for as many players as you need. The player option was created especially for generating crosstables and for Live game broadcasts.

Consider what you would need to do in order to create a crosstable of the Dortmund 1999 tournament. This tournament was a round robin with eight players participating. This means that there were (8 x 7) / 2 games played, or 28. In order to provide the Title, Elo, and Country information of each player in each game, you would have to edit all 28 games in the PGN file and add the Tags for each player, as shown below:

[Event "Dortmund"]
[Site "Germany"]
[Date "1999.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Adams, Michael"]
[Black "Timman, Jan"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B43"]
[WhiteTitle "GM"]
[WhiteElo "2708"]
[WhiteCountry "ENG"]
[WhiteTitle "GM"]
[WhiteElo "2650"]
[WhiteCountry "NED"]
...

This is a long and laborious task. With the player option, you can provide each player's information in a single line and let Palview keep track of it for each player. Here is an example for the Dortmund tournament:

player = "Adams, Michael:gm:2708:ENG:2754"
player = "Timman, Jan:gm:2650:NED:2554"
player = "Anand, Viswanathan:gm:2771:IND:2745"
player = "Topalov, Veselin:gm:2690:BUL:2548"
player = "Karpov, Anatoly:gm:2700:RUS:2755"
player = "Sokolov, Ivan:gm:2656:BIH:2609"
player = "Leko, Peter:gm:2701:HUN:2863"
player = "Kramnik, Vladimir:gm:2760:RUS:2798"

Using just the above eight lines, Palview can fill in each player's information as it is needed for the crosstable and for each game's infobox. Palview will use the country field to display the appropriate flag of the player, for example.

The player command has at least four fields, sometimes five if you wish to provide an optional Performance Elo. The fields must always appear in this order: "name:title:elo:country[:perfelo]" and fields are separated by a colon.

The name must match the name of the player as it appears in the PGN game(s) White or Black Tag. The title can be any of GM, IM, or FM. The elo should be a four-digit number 2000 .. 3000. The country should be the three letter FIDE country code. (For the FIDE codes, see the section: The Palview Flags.) The perfelo is optional and is used to display the performance rating of the player for the event. It is placed at the end of the crosstable. Here is the crosstable for the Dortmund 99 tournament.

Palview can also make good use of the player command during Live game broadcasts. You can use it to provide each player's information in the INI file that is passed to Palview each time a Live game's PGN is passed. This means that the Live PGN does not need to keep track of each player's title, elo, or country.

Note that with Palview4, the player INI option is only used for the batch page and live games -- in all other pages generated by Palview4 the player option is ignored. This was required because of the new magazine page.