andrei raevsky wrote: Hi!
> I have two questions about how to best use databases with SCID4.0: > > a) I have downloaded the huge ICOfY database > (http://sourceforge.net/projects/icofybase/) which now contains over 4 > million games. I have combined the 5 subases (A through E) into one > SCID4 database. What I would like to do now is to filter out all the > games in which both players do not have at least a 2200 rating. How can > I do that? Should be immediate, not? Use Scids header search, select an ECO range you desire like 0-2200. This will add all games with players up to 2200 to the filter. Use the games list (Ctrl-L) and use "Delete all games in filter" from the context menu (right mouse button for the context menu). After that you should compact your database to really delete the games you just marked as deleted (File / Maintenance /Compact database, and you've to compact both games and names file.) > b) I have been following an interesting thread on chess.com > <http://chess.com> > (http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/convert-mega2009-to-pgn) > in which the participants discuss the legality of exporting the Mega2009 > database to PGN notation and then making it available for the rest of > us. Nobody is making an argument that this would be illegal as long as > two conditions are met i) Mega2009 is exported into PGN and not > distributed in its original format and ii) the Mega2009 database is > exported to PGN with all the commentaries which CB has paid chessmasters > for. I have two questions in this respect: > a) do you believe that this is correct and that such an export > of a Mega2009 stripped from comments into PGN format would be legal? Without reading through the thread, you're entering the domain of copyright here. This domain is a mess. First you'd have to make clear which legislation is appropriate. I'd say it is German legislation as CB is a German company. (But I'm librarian and physicist, both has absolutely nothing in common with a lawyer. Luckily, I may add.) If German legislation is applicable in this case, which I'm pretty sure about, you've to follow the German Urheberrecht (UrhG) and this is quite different from US copyright. E.g. we have no things like "fair use" in Germany, here you can not sell your Copyright as you can in the US just to name some points. According to German legislation, to the best of my knowledge, dumping down a database is prohibited. Full stop. It's not a matter of format, its the database dump as such. Now you can enter the interesting discussion of "what is a database dump" and I'm glad again that physics laws are not written like lawyers say they do their job. Its a bit gray here what makes up a dump. One could say 1 record, one could argue that a certain amount is actually required for usage of a database and AFAIK the "law" is: "a substantial amount of data" (whatever "substantial" means is up to your judge...) One could probably argue in the direction of "I contributed a substantial amount of own data, therefore it is not the original database anymore, so I hold the copyright", but here again you have this bad word "substantial" and a playing ground for lawyers of both sides. (At the least.) But in any way: dumping down the whole thing regardless the format is surely prohibited by German legislation. Concerning copyright of commentaries by whatever chess expert (GM is no criterium for a lawyer, AFAIK) you'd want to read the comments about Huebners cases. He tried several times to copyright a game of chess. Luckily, without success. AFAIK there is no way to copyright a commentary for a chess game or the game itself and ther're some decisions that make this clear. AFAIK the the argument is about the creativity involved. Due to the strict rules and the logic of the game this is considered "not enough". (I lack the precise translation of "Schöpfungshöhe" which would be the "lawyers german word".) > b) if yes, do you know if anybody has already made this and > where this database can be downloaded? I think no and none ;) > Lastly, how would you rate the various databases out there? There is > the 1,74 million game database, there is the uge ICOfY, there is the > Chess Analysis Openings database, the UAB CIS enormous database, etc. > Which would you rate as the highest quality database and, if you know, > how would these publicly available databases compare to a proprietary > one like Mega2009? Difficult to answer. IMHO you've a major problem with duplicate games and quality of your metadata (player names and such). Completeness is another point, ie. are all tournaments covered complete or are there some games lacking? Additionally, you find different game notations in different sources, that is correctness is not always assured. Collecting the stuff from free sources is quite a work, so who's to blame? Most likely the best databases are not available even for money or any other "compensation"... Concerning metadata: do not assume any perfection from CB Mega. Might well be that other DBs keep up with that one easily. Still, I used some older Mega as a core for my RefBase and fill it up form other sources. (Mainly TWIC.) My experience with free dbs available was that they tell you a huge number of games but contain many doubletts due to misspellings of player names and so on. Misspellings you can not even correct with Scids spell checker. (Just think about transcription rules for russian names in German and English. Jussupow = Yusupov is one of my favourites there, but you can just fire up Scids spell checker for a list of common spellings of various players.) But I even found some bugs in the CB Mega core of my Refbase myself as well. Things get quite messy if you use a lot of different sources to build up a DB. BTW: The solution to the initial problem mentioned in the thread is to use more than one file. AFAIK you're hitting a file size limit here. If the file size is not an issue to copy both halfs together is immediate: cat file1.pgn file2.pgn > all.pgn (Or in DOS: type file1.pgn file2.png > all.pgn). But for him to import the beast to Scid, why doesn't he just import the two files one at a time to the same DB? No need to have anything in one db for the import. Funny is the idea of using a text editor. <rofl> However, the guys initial problem is, that he does not want to work with a PGN of that size but with a Scid database instead. -- Kind regards, / War is Peace. | Freedom is Slavery. Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength. | | Theory : G. Orwell, "1984" / In practice: USA, since 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry® Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9-12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconf _______________________________________________ Scid-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users
