This directory contains metadata for using ChessBase Player Base
Photos from the Mega DB 2006 + some additional metadata for new
players. Naming follows FIDE players_list.txt as of 02/2009.

Content:
~~~~~~~~

* mega-historic.xml.gz  : mainly historic players
* mega-2006.xml.gz      : meta data for player photos delivered with
                          Mega 2006 as a simple XML structure
                          associating the player name with the proper
                          image file.
* mega-2007-addon.xml.gz: meta data for files that might be available
                          on newer Mega DB's. Could be merged with 
                          mega2006.xml.gz, state: additions in 2007.
* mega-2008-addon.xml.gz: additions in 2008.
* Mega2Scid.pl          : very simple perl-hack using ImageMagick and
                          mpack to convert the original JPG images to
                          GIF files while scaling them down
                          appropriately. After conversion they are
                          recoded to base64 for usage with scid and a
                          proper spf-files are generated for all files
                          listed at the beginning of the file. For
                          further config see the script itself.

                          Note: to speed up conversion /dev/shm is
                          used as temporary dir, which is the RAM disk
                          on Linux systems.

                          This script was tested on Linux only, but
                          should also give a general idea how to
                          proceed on another OS.

Note: The images themselves might be copyrighted by ChessBase or any
other authority, therefore they are NOT part of this distribution.
