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Last modified: May 02, 2002
Chess Markup Language (ChessML)

[October 07, 2000] Chess Markup Language (ChessML) is an XML standard for chess currently under development by Oliver Sick of the Global Analysis Group in the Math Department, University of Bonn, Germany. Principal project goals are to: (1) Define a data storage format which preserves all abstract information; an important example is the PDB database developed by Gerd Wilts and others; (2) Build an interface to chess problem software such as Popeye, Alybadix, Natch and others; (3) Develop a flexible format providing simple export functions to LaTeX, HTML, PDF, RTF and others; (4) Provide simple interfaces for the data conversation between this hypothetical standard and other chess standard such as PGN and FEN. The ChessML web site provides a working draft specification for ChessML, with four XML DTDs, documentation, examples, and FAQ document. The ChessML sources, example and the documentation files are distributed under the Gnu Public License.

ChessML design motivation: "...there is the well documented, non proprietary and very intuitive PGN format ['Portable Game Notation'] for chess which can be imported and exported by almost all chess databases and chess programs. PGN itself uses the ECO Codes as an internal encoding scheme for different chess openings. ECO Codes in PGN are an equivalent to ENTITIES in XML. Also XML documents usually are very easy to understand (if its DTD is 'good'). But PGN does not provide any of the features of a markup language like XML or SGML. So it is natural to look for an implementation of PGN in XML. Indeed ChessML is an extension of this idea. It uses the rich structure of XML and so it has many more capabilities than PGN itself."

Using XML: "One of most important differences of XML and ChessML as an XML representation compared to PGN is its linking capabilities (called Xlink and Xpointer). This means there are very efficient ways to point to other parts of an ChessML document with respect to other parts. And this is indeed a very important fact if one remembers the citation of openings during an analysis or of a particular position of another game. My XSL file is called chess.xsl and is indeed very rudimentary, but I'm on the way... Combining the DTD and the Stylesheet with a ChessML document you can for example view the documnent in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x."

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