Possible feature request: search in variations

[jurnieks]

Dear developers,

I guess any possibility to search for a particular position in variations could be very useful.
At least, sometimes it is necessary to find position from your game in your repertoire database, which normally consist of a lot of variations with comments. At the moment, as far as I can understand, HCE Pro can search only within a main line.

Thank you in advance,
Regards,
Andrejs.

[DimEyeChessGuy]

At the moment, as far as I can understand, HCE Pro can search only within a main line.

Thank you in advance,
Regards,
Andrejs.

Oooh.. is that accurate? That is terribly limiting and, if true, I'd like to second this suggestion. If I've done the work to analyze a position in a game/line, I'd like for HCE Pro to be able to find that position and present it to me from search.

[mrudolf]

I guess any possibility to search for a particular position in variations could be very useful.
At least, sometimes it is necessary to find position from your game in your repertoire database, which normally consist of a lot of variations with comments. At the moment, as far as I can understand, HCE Pro can search only within a main line.

Yes, this would be useful. But it is not that easy: HCE uses search index to speed up all the position searches. This will not be useful for variation searches, and searching every game would be slow for any larger database. But we will look for some solution.

[DimEyeChessGuy]

I guess any possibility to search for a particular position in variations could be very useful.
At least, sometimes it is necessary to find position from your game in your repertoire database, which normally consist of a lot of variations with comments. At the moment, as far as I can understand, HCE Pro can search only within a main line.

Yes, this would be useful. But it is not that easy: HCE uses search index to speed up all the position searches. This will not be useful for variation searches, and searching every game would be slow for any larger database. But we will look for some solution.

Maybe have it as an option in the search mask for people who 'need' to do such a search. However, I wouldn't imagine I'd be searching on this type of thing from a majorly large database.. but I could see using it for searching on my repertoire database which is much, much smaller.

[mrudolf]

Maybe have it as an option in the search mask for people who 'need' to do such a search. However, I wouldn't imagine I'd be searching on this type of thing from a majorly large database.. but I could see using it for searching on my repertoire database which is much, much smaller.

Maybe we can add it to search position for smaller databases. I'll do some performance tests to check the database size for which it is feasible.

[jurnieks]

Maybe have it as an option in the search mask for people who 'need' to do such a search. However, I wouldn't imagine I'd be searching on this type of thing from a majorly large database.. but I could see using it for searching on my repertoire database which is much, much smaller.

Maybe we can add it to search position for smaller databases. I'll do some performance tests to check the database size for which it is feasible.

Or you can allow users to mark some databases (with the size limit check, of course) as a repertoire databases. This allows you to add more functionality later with a little coding (like "search this position in your repertoire").

[mrudolf]

Or you can allow users to mark some databases (with the size limit check, of course) as a repertoire databases. This allows you to add more functionality later with a little coding (like "search this position in your repertoire").

We have many ideas about repertoires but this will take time, so it is probably better to implement this separately.

[jurnieks]

Agreed.

[mw.865747]

We have many ideas about repertoires but this will take time, so it is probably better to implement this separately.

Please tell me, that one of those ideas is a trainer like Chess Position Trainer. Heck ... even as "sold separately"

I tried Chess Openings Trainer (Android), LiStudy and Chesstempo. They did not appeal to me. Chessable feels much better, but bug-fixing is so slow and some much needed features (like starting from Tabiya) are taking forever combined with little customization it's okay, but far from perfect.
Never tried Chessbase for that, because my version (14) does not have that feature and from what I read, it does not track progression but is rather random based.

[mrudolf]

Yes we are considering this. But this needs to be carefully planned, as I believe this makes no sense without spaced repetition.

Although one problem I can see is that other solutions let you repeat your repertoire on a mobile too, quite useful feature for traveling tournament players.

[jurnieks]

Do you think the "search in variations" functionality could be included into the HCEPro 1.3? Thank you.

[mrudolf]

Do you think the "search in variations" functionality could be included into the HCEPro 1.3? Thank you.

I will have a look. The biggest problem is that the search now blocks the GUI, as it is normally very fast, so we would either need to block variation search for large databases (simpler) or make it non-blocking (more complicated).

[jurnieks]

Do you think the "search in variations" functionality could be included into the HCEPro 1.3? Thank you.

I will have a look. The biggest problem is that the search now blocks the GUI, as it is normally very fast, so we would either need to block variation search for large databases (simpler) or make it non-blocking (more complicated).

In my opinion, the simplest solution adds a very important new functionality immediately.