SCID

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SCID, (Scid, Shane's Chess Information Database) a cross platform open source chess database under the GNU Lesser General Public License, to view, edit, and manage collections of chess games, initially developed by Shane Hudson, who worked from 1999 to 2003 on it, the back end written in C++, the GUI in Tcl/Tk. Pascal Georges worked on SCID from December 2006 until January 2010 and added UCI, FICS and Novag Citrine support, and ported SCID to the Pocket PC. Further contributors were Marc Lacrosse, Michal Rudolf, Hans Ericson, Franz Nagl, Alexander Wagner and Uwe Klimmek, et al.. SCID can read PGN and EPD files (and export to PGN, LaTeX and HTML) and uses its own database format for fast database search and queries by position, material, pattern, players, and opening, etc., and can use XBoard and UCI compliant chess engines to analyze games, and further supports mining of 5-man Nalimov Tablebases. The SCID library was used by Gady Costeff and Lewis Stiller to implement the Chess Query Language.

=GUI= The SCID GUI, written in Tcl, evolved to a sophisticated multiple purpose tabbed document interface, with game lists of databases and game windows with board and tabbed notation, opening tree, and analyze panes as document views. Database queries and transactions are initiated via modal dialog boxes.

=Database Format= SCID Databases consist of three kind of files, index files (.si4), name files (.sn4) and game files (.sg4), the latter containing the moves, variations and annotations of each game. The compact move encoding requires an incremental updated board representation aka piece list, and therefore takes only one byte for most moves (except diagonal queen moves), using a nibble as piece list index, determining from square and piece to move, and the second nibble as enumeration index of possible target squares.

=SCID Forks=
 * ChessDB
 * Scid on the Go
 * Scid vs. PC
 * Scidb

=See Also=
 * Chess Assistant
 * Chess Query Language
 * ChessBase (Database)
 * ChessX
 * jose
 * Scidlet
 * Tarrasch

=Forum Posts=

1999

 * Scid: Linux Chess Data Base by Peter Herttrich, CCC, September 08, 1999

2000 ...

 * A word in praise of Scid v1.0 by Andrew Williams, CCC, January 11, 2000
 * Scid 2.0 Chess Data Base by Peter Herttrich, CCC, November 09, 2000
 * Scid 2.1 (free chess database) now available by Shane Hudson, CCC, November 20, 2000
 * Scid 2.2 (free chess database app) available by Shane Hudson, CCC, January 14, 2001
 * Scid 2.4 now available by Shane Hudson, CCC, May 06, 2001
 * Scid 2.5 is now available by Shane Hudson, CCC, June 20, 2001
 * Sjeng & Scid by Stefan Knappe, CCC, August 30, 2001 » Sjeng
 * Scid 2.7 released by Shane Hudson, CCC, October 16, 2001
 * Scid 3.2 released by Shane Hudson, CCC, February 24, 2002
 * Paderborn 2002 Complete Opening Report with Scid 3.2 by Arturo Ochoa, CCC, March 02, 2002 » IPCCC 2002
 * Scid 3.3 by Shane Hudson, CCC, June 04, 2002
 * SCID and chess variants by Andrzej Nagorko, CCC, July 22, 2002
 * Installing Scid for Linux by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, September 01, 2002
 * is Scid used for running engine-engine matches? by Swaminathan Natarajan, CCC, September 25, 2003
 * The new version 3.5 of SCID free chess database is out! by Andy Prap, CCC, December 18, 2003
 * scid vs chessbase by David Kirkby, rgcc, January 01, 2004 » ChessBase (Database)
 * Scid 3.6 is now available by Shane Hudson, CCC, February 26, 2004
 * Scid 3.6.1 is released by Shane Hudson, CCC, March 02, 2004
 * One week without Windows ! Help with Scid install ! by Aloisio Ponti Lopes, CCC, March 28, 2004
 * What _really_ happened to Scid and Shane Hudson? by George Sobala, CCC, June 05, 2004

2005 ...

 * Features added to Scid by Pascal Georges, rgcc, January 02, 2007
 * Scid development activity? by stu..., rgcc, February 02, 2007
 * Scid 3.6.4 released (chess database) by Pascal Georges, rgcc, February 24, 2007
 * Scid 3.6.6 released (chess database) by Pascal Georges, Avler Chess, March 07, 2007
 * Scid 3.6.11 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, April 13, 2007
 * Scid 3.6.13 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, April 26, 2007
 * Scid 3.6.14 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, May 08, 2007
 * Scid for Pocket PC - First Beta released by Pascal Georges, CCC, June 21, 2007
 * Why Scid should stay alive [Re: Statistical significance of score differences - new release ofChessDB ] by Pascal Georges, rgcc, August 22, 2007
 * FAKE Scid released (chess database software) by Guy Macon, rgcc, November 09, 2007
 * Release of Scid 3.6.24 and Scid Pocket 1.1 by Pascal Georges, CCC, June 22, 2008
 * Scid 3.6.25 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, September 01, 2008
 * Scid 3.7 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, March 01, 2009
 * Scid 4.0 beta (chess database and training software) by Pascal Georges, CCC, July 27, 2009
 * Scid 4.0 (chess database and training software) by Pascal Georges, CCC, September 02, 2009
 * Scid Pocket v4 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, December 24, 2009

2010 ...

 * Scid 4.1 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, January 02, 2010
 * Scid 4.2 released by Pascal Georges, CCC, January 19, 2010
 * Scid forks by Ivan Toporov, CCC, Mar 13, 2011
 * Scid 4.4 released by Marek Soszynski, CCC, March 29, 2013
 * Scid 4.5.1 development version released by Marek Soszynski, CCC, May 12, 2013
 * Scid vs PC 4.8 or Scid 4.4? by Gerald Grimsley, CCC, August 01, 2013
 * Scid.eco by Gregor Cramer, scid-users, April 19, 2014 » ECO, Scidb

2015 ...

 * SCID Chess by AA Ross, January 23, 2015
 * Scid (si4) File Format by Dominik Klein, CCC, March 08, 2015
 * A new version of Scid is available [4.6.4] by Marek Soszynski, CCC, August 02, 2016
 * About SCID by Fernando Villegas, CCC, November 23, 2016  » Windows 32
 * scid - pgn database size limitation? by Günther Simon, CCC, February 23, 2018
 * [SCID Database Updated FIDE spelling files - February 2018+] by styx, CCC, February 27, 2018
 * SCID 4.7 by Fulvio, CCC, January 30, 2019

=External Links=
 * Scid - Chess Database Software
 * Scid: Code Documentation by Doxygen
 * Scid | SourceForge.net
 * Shane's Chess Information Database from Wikipedia
 * scid-users mail archive
 * GitHub - asdfjkl/si4spec: Scid4 File Format Specification by Dominik Klein

=References= Up one Level