← Guide

A project is a collection of chapters, as a study or a chess book is, and a chapter holds games one after the other, with text between their moves. The move list shows the whole chapter: a light rule marks where each game begins, and its numbering starts again; click a move of another game and the board goes there.

Right-click the move list — on a move, on a paragraph, or anywhere, even with no moves — for:

• Insert ▸ Paragraph: a paragraph after the move (or where the board is), written right there in the move list. Write as in a book: the text is justified, and each new line starts a new paragraph, indented. Esc, Ctrl+Enter or a click elsewhere ends; a paragraph left empty goes away. Double-click a paragraph (or a title, or a subtitle) to write in it again — a single click leaves it alone; Edit Paragraph, Move and Delete Paragraph are on its menu: Move takes it To the Top or To the Bottom of the game, or Up and Down a half-move at a time — after White's move, Down takes it after Black's, which comes back on White's row. Paragraphs go on the main line.
• Insert ▸ Title and Insert ▸ Subtitle: a heading where a paragraph would go, to divide a chapter as a book does: a title in bold and centred, a subtitle in bold, a little smaller and centred too. They are written, moved and deleted as paragraphs are. A title or a subtitle is one line: Enter confirms it.
• Move: moves what you clicked. On a title, a subtitle or a paragraph it moves that, as above; on a move, or anywhere else, it moves the whole game To the Top or To the Bottom of the chapter, or Up and Down past the game above or below it — the breaks between games go with them; the board stays on the game it shows.
• Insert ▸ Game Break: a new game from the starting position, its numbering starting from 1 again, right under the game you right-clicked in — always, even several in a row. A game with no moves yet still has its place in the list, the first move's cell shown faint ("1. …"): click it to go to that game. It stays until you delete it.
• Right-click anywhere in a game — a move, its first cell, its text — for Delete Game, or Delete Line when it does not start from move 1. Right-click the number of a game's first move for Change Move Number…: a line from a position set up can start from move 12 rather than 1 (it is the move number of the start position, as PGN writes it).
• Right-click the rule of a game break: Delete Game Break takes it away when nothing was entered after it; when the game after it has moves, Delete Following Game takes away the break and that game (a game of the database stays there; you are asked first when moves not saved anywhere would be lost). Titles, subtitles and paragraphs are deleted the same way, from their own menu.

New Game, New Training, Set Up Position, the pastes and online games all add their game at the end of the chapter, and so does a game opened from the games list (one the chapter has already is simply shown). Games stored in a database are saved there as they change; the others, and every paragraph, are saved with the project.

The File menu has the chapters: New Chapter…, Switch Chapter to choose the one open, and at the end of its list Manage Chapters… to reorder (drag, or Move Up and Move Down), rename, add and delete them. Project Information… gives the project a name of its own.

A project can be multilingual: tick Multilingual project in File ▸ Project Information… and choose the Language of the texts, English or Italiano. The project stays one — the same chapters, games and moves —, but its name, the chapters' titles, the titles, subtitles and paragraphs are written in each language separately: what you write goes into the language chosen, and a text not written in it yet is shown in English, or in the other language, so you can translate it where it stands. A multilingual project always opens in the language of the interface. A project in one language instead declares its language, in the same Language of the texts: its texts are written in it, whatever the language of the interface, and choosing another declares the same texts in it, without translating them. A new project takes the language of the interface. So you can use Pragma Chess in Italian and look after a project's texts in English.

Pragma Chess comes with projects of its own, in the Projects folder from the first start, to see what a project can be: open them with File ▸ Open Project…. Rook Endgames goes through the rook endings every player meets, Pawn Endgames through the ideas every ending comes down to — the square, the opposition, the key squares, the rook’s pawn, the outside passed pawn, the breakthrough —, and Fischer – Spassky 1972 comments the sixth game of the Reykjavik match; all in English and Italian.

A new, empty project has no chapters: Switch Chapter shows (No Chapter), greyed out, and a game opened from the games list, or a new one, takes the place of the one on the board. The moves you play on the board are not a chapter yet: when they are saved nowhere, you are asked first whether to Save the game to the open database or let it go (Don't Save). As soon as you put something in — a game break, a paragraph, a title — it becomes the first chapter, with everything that is there; New Chapter… does the same. Delete every chapter in Manage Chapters… and the project is without chapters again, with an empty board. And if the chapter came by itself, deleting what made it — the break, the paragraph, the title — brings the project back without chapters too; a chapter made with New Chapter…, or renamed, stays.