Kvetka - chess game notation

[smaragdus]

Kvetka is a portable viewer for PGN (Portable Game Notation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Game_Notation) and FEN (Forsyth–Edwards Notation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsyth%E ... s_Notation) files. Kvetka uses Stockfish engine (http://stockfishchess.org/) for analysis but other engines can also be added.

About Kvetka:

Kvetka was mainly created for a convenient viewing chess games from web pages like Chessgames, Chessville, Chessbase, etc. Many of them usually provide online tools for viewing games but you can't move the pieces and can't use the engine. So you have to run some chess programs which are usually bulky.

Kvetka features:

- User-friendly interface.
- Uses comparably small area on the screen.
- Works with all UCI engines for analysing the game. The strongest (as we believe) engine Stockfish supports this format. By the way it is distributed together with Kvetka.
- It intends for analysing games only. You can't play chess with Kvetka, but we are thinking about it.
- PGN and FEN support. It also opens such formats as EPD, CBH (from Chessbase) and SI4 (from SCID).
- You can easily add the games via the clipboard.
- Recognizes online chess games from such web sites as Chess.com, Chessgames.com, Chessok.com and others (full list).
- Supports different fonts and encodings that are used by chess sites.
- Kvetka's functionality can be greately extended with plugins. For example opening book support, hints on a board and games printing availability can be added.
- It is free!

Kvetka links:

http://www.kvetka.org/en/ - Kvetka web-site

http://www.kvetka.org/en/about.shtml - Kvetka features

http://www.kvetka.org/en/download.shtml - Kvetka download page

http://www.kvetka.org/history.shtml - Kvetka change log (in Russian)

http://www.kvetka.org/en/document.shtml - Kvetka documentation

http://games.softpedia.com/get/Tools/Kvetka.shtml - Kvetka at Softpedia

Kvetka downloads:

http://www.kvetka.org/en/download.shtml - All Kvetka downloads - Kvetka installer, Kvetka portable, plug-ins and chess pieces

http://www.kvetka.org/download/engkvetka.zip - direct download link for the portable version of Kvetka

Please note that the plug-ins are not included in the portable version of Kvetka and should be downloaded separately.

Kvetka screen-shots:

-1- Kvetka main window, moves window and games window:

-2- Kvetka options:

Kvetka portable:

Download the portable version of Kvetka- engkvetka.zip, extract the archive and run kvetka.exe. All data and settings are stored in DAT files (analys.dat, data.dat, engine_options.dat, notation.dat, windserv.dat) inside program folder. In order to use plug-ins create plugins sub-folder inside program folder, download the needed plugins, extract the archives and put the DLLs inisde plugins sub-folder. Plug-ins can be activated/deactivated from Options- right-click on Kvetka main window- Options- Plugins.

Kvetka license:

Kvetka is freeware but not open-source.

Kvetka trivia:

Kvetka means "flower" in Belarusian language.

[JohnW]

About 4 months ago I had the need to analyse about 60 games.
I wasn't particularly interested in a very sophisticated program. Basically - just a blunder checker.

I scoured the web and came across a significant number of options but few free ones.
I eventually settled on Lucas Chess which purports to be portable but has not been mentioned in TPFC. It did a satisfactory job. Whether it is portable or not doesn't bother me.

It astonishes me that in all my research I never cames across Kvetka.
It seems a very worthwhile program. So many many thanks to smaragdus. I shall certainly explore its potential.

As usual, smaragdus provides a very comprehensive description ; it just leaves me to add a few comments.

PGN viewers are actually 2-a-penny so this is not its main attraction.
I am less sure whether FEN viewers are common. It's not a notation I like.
Chess playing programs are also very common so the fact that it's not a player is of little consequence.

But good free analysis programs seem to be rare.

[smaragdus]

I forgot to provide an easy way how to get all Kvetka plug-ins without downloading them all separately- just extract the installer (kvetka_setup.exe)- all plug-ins can be found inside {app} folder in plugins sub-folder, just copy plugins folder to Kvetka Portable folder. Both InnoExtractor and Universal Extractor (with latest version of innounp.exe) were able to extract the installer while 7-Zip failed.

@JohnW
First, thanks for your kind words. You are right that there are many PGN viewers but I think that FEN viewers are not so common. You mentioned Lucas Chess- thank you for the reminder, for me it is a very good program and I think it deserves to be reviewed here.In my opinion Lucas Chess is better than Kvetka in many regards- it is open-source and it comes with more pieces, more themes, more engines and overall with far more customization options. I should say that I have never heard of many of the engines Lucas Chess provides by default- this saves lots of time and effort since sometimes it is not easy to find a particular engine (especially the abandoned ones- in some cases (DrunkenMaster) one needs to resort to Archive.Org in order to be able to download an engine). I tested Lucas Chess for portability and it seems to be fully portable and stealth- the natively portable version (there is also a PortableApps package) saves all its data in UsrData inside program folder but I suppose it may add some Qt strings to the registry (I was lazy to check for that) which is common for Qt programs.

[smaragdus]

Kvetka at version 3.29, downloads and full change log via Google Translate.