[ANNOUNCE] PyChess Staunton 0.10

[pychess at gmail.com]

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Announcement for PyChess Staunton 0.10
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We have had a lot of last minute fixes since the release
candidate. A few of them for bugs that have been around a long time.
In particular there has been a lot of stabilization of CECP and UCI,
so they should now work with an even wider set of engines. You can
even run windows engines through wine.

Another important addition to our project is our new website at
pychess.org. The website has a good introduction to the client and the
community, and in the future it will hopefully be filled with chess
related functionality. Sharing your games online could be a great such
future.

The main new features of the release are still:

* Support for chess variants, PyChess now allows you to play Fischer
Random with your majors huffled, to play Losers chess with being mated
as your goal, or simply playing odds chess as an additional way of
giving a player a handicap.

* On-line play which has been enhanced with chat support. Besides
chatting with your opponent, the FICS community has several channels,
in which you can discuss chess and varies of other topics.

* The FICS support has also been improved with built-in Timeseal
support. This helps to terminate lag, and is especially helpful in
very fast games, like bullet chess.

* If you prefer to play off-line, PyChess now lets you choose from
eight different play-strengths. The built in PyChess engine has as
well been extended 'in both extremes' now making many more human like
mistakes in the easy mode, and playing at more than double strength in
the hard mode, utilizing end game tables.

* UI-wise, PyChess takes use of a new pure-python docking widget,
which lets you rearrange the sidepanels by wish.

I would really like to thank everyone who have helped to move Staunton
forward to a release, and I hope our next release - PyChess Anderssen
1.0 - will be out on a slightly shorter cycle.

Please help spread the news of the release to users around the world,
And if you notice that the translation for your language isn't fully
updated, head to Rosetta now, and we'll fix it in the 0.10.1 release.

Changelog list in http://code.google.com/p/pychess/wiki/StauntonRelease

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About PyChess
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PyChess is a swift chess client originally developed for Gnome, but
running well under any other linux desktops. As far as we know of.
PyChess is pure, delicious Python code, from the top of the UI to the
bottom of the chess engine, and all under GNU General Public License
for you to hack and enjoy.

The goal of PyChess is to provide an advanced chess client for Linux,
and do that with a nice and efficient user interface in line with the
Gnome Human Interface Guidelines. The client should be fun and
exciting to those new to chess - who just want to play a short games
to procrastinate their work - as well as those who want to utilize
their computer for further enhancing their play.

Very briefly, the following gives a picture of how far we have come.
Rest assured that there is much more to come.

* PyChess lets you play against lots of chess engines in the CECP and
UCI formats in many different difficulties. The easiest one being
actually easy and making many human like mistakes.

* If you like to play against others of the human species, PyChess
supports online play on the FICS servers. It's a whole big chess
community with options to chat, challenge and observe games of great
players.

* You can easily save and open games from the standard PGN, EPD and
FEN chess file formats for later continuation or analysis. You can
even export a large set of games to a sheet of chess diagrams in the
Chess Alpha font.

* If tend to make mistakes while playing, you'll be happy to know,
that PyChess lets you undo in a click. If you need to go for lunch,
you can pause the game at any time.

* When you are in lack of inspiration, PyChess offers an opening book
and so called hint and spy modes, which shows you what the computer
would do in your place, and what it would do if you opponent could
move just now.

* Further, PyChess offers a rich and while simple interface, with
sound, animation and Human Interface as first class citizens.

Happy playing, PyChess team

Homepage: http://pychess.org
Downloads: http://pychess.org/downloads
Screenshots: http://pychess.org/about
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/pychess
Bug list: http://code.google.com/p/pychess/issues/list
Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/pychess-people