Battista

Battista works together with another program PRBASE (also downloadable for the AISE home page); both can be used for helping to see openings and good moves in Italian Progressive Chess.

Below, you see a part of the README file of Battista.

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
=====================
To install the data-base, about 7 Mbytes of hard-disk memory space
are needed.
The browser requires a color screen.

ABOUT INSTALLATION
==================
1. Enter DOS.
2. Create an hard-disk directory <dirname>.
3. Copy files in "Disco 1" and "Disco 2" in <dirname>.
4. Move to <dirname>
5. Input command INSTALL and wait for files to be undecompressed.
6. Delete the installion file with the command DEL INSTALL.BAT

ABOUT SOFTWARE UTILIZATION
==========================
To browse the database:
1. Enter DOS.
2. Move to directory <dirname>
3. Input command BATTISTA.

Battista moves along PRBASE following its tree structure from the
starting position. Of each position Battista shows:
- The total number of games where that position is reached;
- The total number of variations from the position;
- The number of wins for White, for Black, and of draws;
- A checkmate sign ("#") if the position is a forced loss;
- The first and last time (year) that the position was reached.

To go up and down the PRBASE tree, use the Page or arrow keys.
The Tab key exports the current branch to a text file.
The Esc key quits the program.

After the last PRBASE update, the database consists of about 10,800
complete games, for about 36,000 positions and 38,700 connections.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
===================
These will depend on the success met by the program. The are plans
about:
- User-defined colors to represent board and pieces;
- A filtered search routine to exclude positions and variants that
  do not meet certain user-defined characteristics, e.g. "show all
  variants from a given position with a black Night in f6", etc.
- Search for variants played by a specific player.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
================
Many thanks to:
- those AISE members who made PRBASE possible and contributed to
  its development, in particular to D. Polacco, R.Cassano,
  M.Leoncini, A.Castelli.
- Microsoft Corp. for the development of QuickBasic.
- Donatella and Andrea for the emotional support while Battista was
  being written.