Author: Andrew Williams
Date: 13:30:51 05/21/01
Go up one level in this thread
On May 21, 2001 at 15:57:39, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: >On May 21, 2001 at 13:43:55, Andrew Williams wrote: > >>On May 21, 2001 at 13:26:59, Pete Galati wrote: >> >>>On May 21, 2001 at 13:05:48, David Rasmussen wrote: >>> >>>>On May 21, 2001 at 07:04:55, Pete Galati wrote: >>>> >>>>>On May 21, 2001 at 02:56:10, David Rasmussen wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>I don't understand why xboard/winboard doesn't support books on it's own. If it >>>>>>did, no one would have to implement opening book in their engines unless they >>>>>>wanted book learning and such. And even that could be supported by xb/wb. Even >>>>>>if people didn't want to use this feature, they could just turn it off. >>>>>>Many people are reinventing opening book features all the time. And it really >>>>>>isn't as exciting as developing search or evaluation etc. >>>>> >>>>>That's not the nature of Xboard/Winboard. The opening book is the Chess >>>>>program's problem, not Xboard/Winboard's problem. They're just there to give >>>>>you an interface to the Chess program. >>>>> >>>> >>>>I know, but opening book support is so boringly simple, that it might as well be >>>>the interface that does it. It is very boring to implement opening book in a >>>>chess engine (at least for me), still, it can be done in really bad and really >>>>good ways. Why not let the engine handle this? It would make any winboard >>>>program, such as TSCP, have powerful openbook capabilities at hand. >>> >>>I agree, it does open some posibilities. >>> >>>> >>>>>Besides, most of the programers won't want Tim Mann to be the one making the >>>>>opening books for their programs, and my guess is that Tim Mann probably isn't >>>>>interested in doing that either. >>>>> >>>> >>>>Why would Tim Mann be doing it? If this is to be done in any kind of sane way, >>>>users, programmers etc. should be able to build their own books, control >>>>learning features etc. from the engine. >>> >>>I think Gian-Carlo Pascutto indicated that this is in the works already? I'm >>>surprised. But I wonder if a special utility for buiding books for >>>Winboard/Xboard will be included with them. I can't picture building it into >>>the gui. >>> >>>Pete >> >>There have been a few messages in the Winboard/Xboard mailing list. What is >>being proposed seems to be a feature whereby a chess program could *delegate* >>the task of choosing opening moves to some other program. In principle this >>could be a specialized program, but it could equally be another chess program. >>designed just to do this. The key thing is that the implementation wouldn't >>require any change to existing chess programs, unless they wanted to take >>advantage of this facility. Also, the changes to xboard would not be huge, >>as the work of selecting moves would be done by another program, not by xboard. >>Furthermore, the protocol for communicating with the "opening program" would be >>similar to that used for normal chess programs. >> >>Andrew > >I planned to do this! it is in my to do list. I haven't implemented a book for >my program so I thought that when I do it, It would be a "book adapter" that >communicates with winboard and my program. >The adapter plays the book moves until is out of it. Then, it passes to winboard >the moves that my program decides. > > Engine <==> Book Adapter <==> Winboard <==> Opponent engine > >I planned to do this for three reasons >1) save time to other people to implement a book for new programs >2) I can test my program against other weak engines with and w/o books >3) I would learn multithreading programming, about which I know nothing (yet). >In fact, I started to read something until my spare time shrunk a bit. > >Regards, >Miguel Hi Miguel, It would probably be worth you joining the xboard mailing list. I'm afraid I can't remember how I joined, but I expect it was via Tim Mann's chess page: http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html I guess the messages I saw would be archived somewhere. They were both in the last week or so. Andrew
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