Where to start...
The "current best practice" is completely irrelevant for 99.9% of chess players, and for the other 0.1%, it doesn't exist, it's all a matter of taste and they work out their own lines anyway.
You're not supposed to memorize the books. You're supposed to use them to understand what's going on, find answers to questions you may have about certain specific lines. Chess Position Trainer is to be used for the few lines you really need to know cold, say the refutation of some sacrifice in the sicilian. Mostly though you work to understand the positons, and if you know why given moves are played, you also know what they are.
Of course even then, if you want to play through games, and you are used to studying on the computer instead of on a chess board, it can be helpful to have the games on a computer. Unfortunately, many chess publishers are reluctant to offer PGN versions of their books, because that would make them too easy to copy. However, Everyman Chess is doing that nowadays. Other publishers do it in part (e.g., New In Chess yearbooks have PGN downloads of the games, not of the variations and text).
There are companies that offer opening analysis purely electronically (Chess Publishing, ChessVibes Openings), although they focus on novelties and not on explanation, and with them you really feel that if you aren't 2300+, it's just not very relevant to your own games.
You can also get a good database yourself that at least has the games in it, and lookup the game before playing through the game in the book.
But: it's all way too much. The best way is to just play a game, and then afterwards, look up the opening in the book. See what you did wrong, if anything, and try to understand why the book's move is better. If you don't see why it's better, keep playing your own move.
Hi, I'm a relative beginner to chess and I'm looking to build my openings repetoire, so I searched online for some software that would teach me openings and so far I very much like the look of Chess Position Trainer. However I couldn't find any repetoires to download and insert into the software, and the idea of laboriously entering an entire book's worth for every opening is not appealing!!
Then I thought there must be a wikipedia style site where the current consensus on main lines is available and updated as progress is made, but I couldn't find anything like that either.
In this modern age, is there not a better (i.e. interactive, more visual, testing, quicker) alternative to paper books? I can't honestly believe that every single player goes out and cultivates his or her own "personalised" repetoire by buying a selection of books, then possibly entering them all manually into some software. That seems like a massive duplication of effort and liable to make mistakes and/or miss out on the current "best practice" for certain systems.
So what am I doing wrong? I want to study openings, both the ideas and memorisation of lines, in a method more fitting for the 21st century than a paperback!
This newbie thanks you greatly for your help!