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Palview4 Readme: December 25, 2003
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   This ZIP file contains all the files you need to run the Palview4 program. What it does not contain is the Palview4 manual. The manual is a separate ZIP file that you can obtain at Eric Bentzen's site, www.enpassant.dk. You really should obtain a copy of the manual.
   The Palview4 ZIP file places all of its files into a folder called Palview4. You can unzip the contents of the ZIP file anywhere that you please, but you must avoid any SPACEs in the path. So this means that you cannot place the program in the 'Program Files' folder, since this contains a SPACE. I recommend that you either unzip the files to the C: drive itself, which will create a folder C:\palview4, or perhaps create a chess folder on the C: drive and then unzip the program there so that you get C:\chess\palview4.
   Once you have unzipped the program, you'll find that the palview4 folder contains the palview4.exe, p4util.exe and p3eco.exe programs. You will also find a number of CSS files, a file called palview.ini, and another called p3eco.eco. In this main palview4 folder you'll find a number of other folders, each called: jpc, sym, flag, p4sets, help, and work.

   The jpc folder contains all the piece images for the Leipzig chess set, one set of board images, and a number of other images used by Palview4 such as the controlpanles, etc. In short, everything you need to get started right away to make your own Html files with Palview4. (If you would like to use a different board image file, see the ZIP file in the p4sets folder called p4boards.zip. All the boards are shown in the new Palview4 manual in the section The Palview Chess Boards.) Two other images that are in this folder are the fenimg.GIF used for Captioned Diagrams (see manual) and the pgn.GIF image. It is used as part of the link to the PGN file at the bottom of your Html page. (You can create your image for this purpose, just name it pgn.GIF.)           

   The sym folder contains all the highly compressed GIF images of the chess symbols.

   The flag folder contains all the country flags that come with Palview4. (To see them all, you can use the Html file in this folder called palflags.htm. There are over 160 flags.)

   The p4sets folder contains a number of ZIP files. Almost all of these are for the other chess set pieces. There is a separate ZIP file for each size of set as well, so there are four ZIP files for each set 'name'. These names are: Alpha, Kingdom, Leipzig, Linares, Merida, and Tilburg. (Note that there is not yet a Tilburg19 set!) The other ZIP files are:

p4boards.zip  -- contains all the chess boards available for Palview4.

p4conpans.zip -- a backup of the three controlpanels plus the two new problem panels.

p3eco.zip     -- a copy of the p3eco.txt file that was used to create
                 the p3eco.eco opening lookup table.

p4ovx.zip     -- a backup ZIP file that contains each of the special
                 board marker squares circle, dot, and X, in each of
                 the sizes 19, 24, 29, and 35 pixels. (All of these
                 are already in your jpc folder.)

p4syms.zip    -- a backup ZIP file that contains all the chess symbol
                 GIF images that are found in the sym folder.

   In the p4sets folder, you will also find an extra ZIP file, boldp4linares29.zip, that contains a slightly darker version of the Linares set in 29 pixels that you can substitute for the regular linares 29 pixel set if you wish. You will also find two more images called linaresbp24thin.gif and linareswp24thin.gif. If you prefer the look of these thinner pawns for the Linares set, you can simply rename them wp24.gif and bp24.gif and copy them to your jpc folder assuming that you have selected the linares set and have replaced the default leipzig set already.

   The help folder, new to Palview4, contains an html file called help.htm that can be used by the new magazine's game viewer to provide online help to the visitors of your page. It provides them with information on how to use the game viewer's many features. You can upload this help folder and its contents to your web site to use as part of your magazine page. You may need to adjust a number of INI options in your magviewer.INI file to point to the help.htm file in this folder depending upon where you place it relative to your actual magazine page. (See the manual for details.) You can easily create your own help file to replace the one provided by Palview4 if you wish. One was provided just for convenience.

   The work folder is where you will find an example INI file for each page type that Palview4 can generate. You will also find a couple of short example PGN and Htm files. The work folder is where you would place your PGN files and INI files to create your Html pages. You can of course choose any other setup by editing the INI files appropriately, but the INI files provided assume that you will use the work folder as your work place.


   I would strongly suggest that you now go and get yourself a copy of the palview4 manual from Eric Bentzen's site if you haven't already done so. You really do need to read it before you go any further. Once you have downloaded the manual ZIP, you should unzip it into the palview4 folder.
