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Subject: Re: General comments

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:41:29 06/10/04

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On June 10, 2004 at 11:18:56, Daniel Clausen wrote:

>On June 10, 2004 at 11:00:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>>SAN is only a good idea when the information is presented to the user.
>>>It has no place in file formats which are not designed to be read by
>>>humans, nor in engine communication protocols.
>>
>>
>>I don't disagree, except that there are always going to be humans that
>>insist on reading the raw data..
>
>Well, if they insist... I don't see any problem here. :) I think it would be
>unfortunate to use a presentation here which supports people reading things
>they're not really supposed to but add quite a bit of complexity.
>
>Sargon

That complexity has an up-side.  Ever downloaded a PGN file with illegal moves?
I have gotten _plenty_ of them.  Missing moves.  Mal-formed moves.  Ambiguous
moves.  It actually makes sense to produce SAN moves because it forces both ends
to check the thing as it is saved or loaded, to avoid such nonsense...  If you
omit the "chess-specific knowledge" that SAN interpretation requires, you may
well weaken the final product since a pure algebraic parser will be happy, but
when an application actually tries to use the data it discoveres it is broken.





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