Building your sets

Three paths bring an exercise into Régence, and they complement each other: importing fills fast, composing aims precisely, capturing lets nothing slip away.

Import a set

Import a set…, in the module toolbar, asks for a folder containing one PGN file per exercise. The folder becomes a set carrying its name, and each file becomes an exercise.

An exercise is an ordinary PGN: a starting position (FEN) and the solution played as the main line. Opponent replies are interleaved — they will be played automatically during a session.

[Event "01 — Fork on f7"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "r1bqkb1r/pppp1ppp/2n2n2/4p3/2B1P3/5Q2/PPPP1PPP/RNB1K1NR w KQkq - 0 1"]
[Theme "fork"]

1. Bxf7+ Kxf7 2. Qxd5+ *

One file, several games

Import a PGN file… accepts the other layout, the more common one: a single file containing several games. Each game in it becomes an exercise. A Lichess export or a downloaded tactics file opens as-is, with no need to split it beforehand.

Compose a position

New exercise… opens the position editor: place the pieces, choose the side to move, castling rights and move number. A field also accepts a pasted FEN, with a button to copy the one currently displayed.

The exercise is created, then opens on the board: all that remains is to play the solution and save with Cmd + S. This is deliberate — when you compose your own exercise, you already know the answer.

Capture a position you met

The most useful gesture day to day. On any board — a game being reviewed, a study, a constructed position — File > Create an exercise from this position files the current position into your exercises.

It arrives outside any set, without a solution, and without leaving the game you were reading. Filing and solving can wait until the review is over.

An exercise without a solution cannot be played

A captured or composed position has no solution yet. The list flags it “no solution”, and sessions skip it — an exercise with no expected answer has nothing to check.

To complete it: double-click to open it, play the move to be found (and the opponent’s reply, if the solution continues), then Cmd + S. It rejoins the sessions immediately.

Let the engine find it

Solve, in the module’s toolbar, runs the engine on every exercise in the set that has no solution yet, and writes the line it finds. Progress is shown, and the operation can be stopped at any time. The button stays visible at all times: greyed out when there is nothing to solve, with a tooltip that says so.

To handle just one: right-click the exercise, Solve with the engine — offered only when it has no solution.

The analysis runs on the engine’s second process: the interactive engine stays available meanwhile, and you can keep reviewing a game.

What the engine writes follows two rules. A mate is a certainty: the line is written in full, and the theme (mate in 3) is filled in. A win without mate is a judgement: six half-moves are kept, and no theme is written — “advantage” would teach nothing. A theme you typed yourself is never overwritten.

Filing

Filing happens in the module, never in the Finder.

• Drag and drop one or more exercises onto a set in the left column. The set under the cursor lights up.
• Reorder a set by dragging its exercises vertically: the order you choose becomes the set’s order, and the sessions’ order.
• Rename in place, right-click then Rename — the title is corrected where you read it.
• Theme: free text, also on right-click. Fork, pin, mate in 3, rook endgame — whatever you want it to train. It appears at the right of each row.