The Pgn Editor

A new feature in PalMate 2 is the pgn editor. When you work on a Palview webpage it is often convenient to be able to edit the source pgn file. PalMate's pgn editor allows you to do that, and it also makes it easy by way of automation to insert various tags (like e.g. a player's country). Also a few Palview commands that affect the way a webpage will look must be inserted directly into the source pgn file (e.g. captioned diagrams). The editor makes it easy to do this with the right syntax.

The pgn editor can be opened from the View menu, when a webproject is active. Only one file per page can be edited.

The Pgn Editor's Menu

This description of the menu will give you an impression of what you can do with the editor.

The File Menu

The usual stuff. You can save the pgn file, you can revert to the last saved or the original file that was read, when you opened the editor. Of course you can also close the editor from this menu.

Unless you save the file, changes will not have any effect - PalMate/Palview will always process the last saved file.

The Edit Menu

Here you find the usual cut, copy, paste and find functions that are handy, when you edit a text. The usual shortcuts CTRL+C for copy, CTRL+X for cut, CTRL+V for paste and CTRL+F for find work here too.

The Players Menu

Now we get down to some of the PalMate specific stuff. From this menu you can access some powerful tools that will edit game tags - information like the players' country, title and elo. The tags are:

[WhiteCountry "Countrycode"] & [BlackCountry "Countrycode"]
[WhiteTitle "Title"] & [BlackTitle "Title"]
[WhiteElo "Elo"] & [BlackElo "Elo"]

• Supply Player Info. This will open a dialog where you can easily provide information about the players' country, title and elo rating. Palview can use the country information to display flags in the game info-box or in crosstables.

• Update All Game Tags. This will update all game tags in the file with the player information you entered in "Supply Player Info". If there's an old tag in the file with different information (e.g. another title or elo), PalMate will ask for permission to overwrite the old information. If you say "Yes", all subsequent tags with different information will be replaced. PalMate will know if the player has the white or black pieces and insert the right "White.." or "Black.." tag.

• Update Game Tags One Event. This will allow you to write/update/replace tags for one event only. This makes sense if there are games from various tournaments - a player's elo may have changed, or maybe he has moved to another country. If you want different information for a player (or a group of players), you'll have to edit the player information each time for each event - PalMate can handle only one set of player information at a time. PalMate will know if the player has the white or black pieces and insert the right "White.." or "Black.." tag.

Annotator

The annotator menu allows you to edit annotator information.

• Insert Annotator Tag At Cursor. Apart from the known pgn standard game tag "[Annotator "Name"]", Palview supports 3 tags that aren't in the pgn standard, namely:

  [AnnoCountry "Countrycode"]
  [AnnoTitle "Title"]
  [AnnoElo "ELO"]
  

  These tags allow you to supply extended annotator information that will be formatted as defined in the stylesheet. When you select this menu item, a dialog will pop up, which makes it easy to provide the information. The game tags will be inserted at the cursor position.

• Annotator For Single Comment (at cursor). If selected this menu will insert an annotator name for a single comment. The name will be formatted as defined in the ".panno" css class. Be sure the cursor is positioned inside a comment (and at the end). Then it will appear like this (here the insertion in red):

  1. e4 {Statistics show that 1.d4 wins more games [%anno "Kasparov"]}
  

Start Position

There are two ways to display another position than the initial start position. If the game is a game fragment, there must be a game tag with a FEN string, e.g.:

[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 1"]

Another way is to use a game tag (not pgn-standard) like:

[JsCom "startply 34:flip 1"]

• Preset Diagram Position At Ply x. All you have to do is to position the cursor in the pgn header, where you want the tag inserted, and write the ply number (34 in the example above).

• Setup Start Position (FEN). This will open the diagram setup utility. You set up the position and the right FEN tag will be inserted at cursor position. This is very convenient for game fragments as used with the Problem or Tactics pages.

Diagrams

Apart from the usual playable board it is possible to show static diagrams by inserting commands directly into the pgn file.

• Static Diagram At Cursor. If you insert a comment {#} after a move, Palview will display a static diagram of the current position in addition to the dynamic board.

• Static Captioned Diagram At Cursor will also display a static diagram of the current position, but you'll be prompted for a caption text (e.g. "Position after 27. Nf7"), which will be displayed below the diagram.

• Setup Captioned Diagram will open the Diagram Setup Utility. Once you have set up the diagram, the correct command with a FEN string will be inserted into the pgn.
  A captioned diagram will display on the dynamic board when the user clicks an image in the pgn move text. This can be very useful if you want to illustrate some comment with a position. The small image in the move text must be named "fenimg.gif" and must be located in the folder with the chess pieces.

Column Break

Only for static games in magazines. A command will be inserted at the cursor position which will force a column break in the game move text.

Game Caption

Inserts a pgn header tag that will show a caption below the chess board, for instance: "White to move draws". This is useful for e.g. chess problems. Notice that the tag: [Caption "What you write"] is not pgn standard.

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