The development continues. Here are the extensions that become available with the next release.

1. Multiple tracked pieces in the tooltip

The PGN file browser has an useful tooltip showing positions of the game in advance. For the last release I added an menu item in the Properties menu for tracking a single piece, say the white king. If set, then the path of the white king is shown in the tooltip position for the whole game. Now have extended the possibilities: It is possible to track several piece types, say white and black knights. Individual piece tracking like in the game browser is not possible, as the settings obviously apply to all games in the file.

2. Rotate with the EightDirectionsButton

The Setalyser has the rather obvious EightDirectionsButton, which allows you to move all or a selected part of the pieces in one of eight directions. Now you can also rotate the pieces with this button. Press in the center of the button and all or the selected pieces will be rotated by 90 degrees clockwise.

3. Flip about the main diagonals

The setalyser offers two new modifications of the position: You can now mirror all or only a selected part of the pieces on the diagonal a1-h8 or the diagonal a8-h1, resp. (Please see the Setalyser's new layout below.)

4. Swapping Black/White or Left/Right in the PGN file browser

Last year the game browser got the option of swapping the current game (if this is possible). New the PGN file browser can swap all games for which this is possible at once. You will find this option in the "File" menu. The swapped games have to saved in a PGN file afterwards.

5. Save fragments in the Game Browser

In order to expand the support for fragments, a menu item "Save fragment" has now been added to the game menu of the game browser. This option saves the fragment starting with the current position as an independent game in a PGN file to be selected.

6. The Setalyser stores and offers recently used positions

When the Setalyser  is switched to game mode, then the start position is stored in a FEN cache. Thereafter, positions from this cache can be selected in the setup mode from the new "Recent positions" combo box. The positions corresponding to the FENs offered in this combo box are shown on a smaller board while you select.

Here is a picture of the Setalyser's new layout.

8. Full symmetry searches

When working with endgames, one often have to find all the positions that are symmetrical. Therefore the FEN search, the pawn structure search and the pawn pattern search of the PGN file browser have full symmetry as a new option.

A full symmetry search matches also vertical or horizontally reflected positions, position, which are flipped along one of the long diagonals, and positions which are rotated 90, 180 or 270 degrees.

Please note that the pawn structure and pawn pattern search work perfectly with any kind of pieces, in particular for pawnless positions. The name is due to a difference in the interpretation: for a match pawns have to be on the selected squares and nowhere else, while pieces may also appear on the empty squares of the structure or pattern, resp. Sounds maybe strange, but works great.

9. Rotating whole games

The game browser has three new menu items for game rotation: 90 degrees clockwise, 180 degrees and 90 degrees anti-clockwise, respective. Of course, they can only be applied to pawnless games without castling moves, e.g. endgame studies.

10. Linux support

Windows was my favorite operating system for years, but that is changing. I am switching to Linux, at least in part. Java, the programming language of the Chess Suite, should not be affected. But that's just the theory. In real life there are many places where the operating system shines through (fonts, window frames, the file system, etc). So, Linux support is currently improving rapidly. However, some changes will also be necessary.

For example, in the game browser Alt+F2 is currently used to start/stop the engine. Like many other commands, I adopted this key combination from Chessbase. However, under Linux, Alt-F2 is a command that is not passed on to the Chess Suite, but starts another application instead. So, please use simply F2 instead (works on Windows, too). And the same solution is made for Alt+F3, which starts or stops the blunder check.

11. Search options in the PGN file browser extended

There are some new search options in the PGN file browser search menu items. E.g., several kinds of checks in the event search as well as a serach for check in the starting position within the first move properties search (where a search for box NAG has been added as well).