← Guide

A project is what you are looking at: the database, the game and the move, the side the board is seen from, the engine, the panels and whether you are training. The title bar shows its name — the file's, or the one given in File ▸ Project Information… — with an asterisk when it has changes not saved, and, once the project has chapters, the chapter open (it goes when the project is back without chapters): Openings - The Italian - Pragma Chess*.

• File ▸ New Project keeps what you see — database, engine, panels — and starts a new, empty game, with White below.
• File ▸ Open Project… and File ▸ Open Recent Project open a .pch file. In your file manager a project has the document icon of your system with a pawn on the page, and opening it opens Pragma Chess.
• File ▸ Save Project and File ▸ Save Project As… save it.

You do not have to save: Pragma Chess reopens as you closed it.

Panels can be resized and closed; the View menu (Moves, Opening Tree, Engine, Games List) shows them again, and View ▸ Reset Panel Layout puts them back where they start.

File ▸ Project Information… shows the project's file, its name, a description, the author, contacts and edition (a line each, kept in the project), its languages and whether it is read-only. Changing them is the exception, not the rule: the fields open locked, and the Edit button, with its padlock, unlocks them; the file's name is not changed there (Save Project As… does that). The ? at the end of each field says what it is for.

Read-only, in File ▸ Project Information…, keeps a project from changes made without thinking: its chapters, titles, paragraphs, comments and variations cannot be changed, and it is not saved — the board can still be explored, and the title bar says (Read-Only). Untick it to change the project. The projects that come with Pragma Chess are read-only.