Author: Daniel Mehrmannn
Date: 14:50:14 11/06/04
Hi folks, i want to pickup a new idea or a old problem with the current wb2 protocol. Please see that new stuff, at the moment, only as a suggestion and __NOT__ as a offical Announcement ! The most problem is that some importent things are not clear defined in this version. Thats not so bad as some authors think, because we have more space for own ideas :) But let me explain: A lot of commercial/free GUIs add special stuff above the current wb2 protocol. Thats maybe very interesting for some authors and of the other side it bring up a lot of problems. Now here is my suggestion to make it clear in the furure. I post this first in our xboard.devel group. Plase take a deep breath, read, think a while of it, and not response quickly to that message. What happend if all engines know which wb2 GUI will be used ? That would be wonderfull and the engine __CAN__, not __must__, support special features of this GUI. This include all aspects about the protocol, information strings and other stuff. There are a lot of examples for the different commercial/free GUIs: PV line, timecontrol and current searched move are maybe the bigest things. That __not__ means that now every GUI can do what they want. That would be a nightmare. So be carefull ! I put all changes stuff to our Xboard/Winboard cvs server: You can read the changed engine-intf.html version: http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/xboard/xboard/engine-intf.html?rev=2.3&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup Techinal stuff: I thought a long time how to do that. Its clear that we need a clear defined standard with no space for own changes. Copy from engine-intf.html: <dt><font color=blue><strong>gui GUI_NAME VERSION.SUBVERSION</strong></font> <dd><font color=blue> This is a new feature. The GUI sending after the "xboard" command and before "protover N" string the command "gui <GUI_NAME> <VERSION>.<SUBVERSION>" to the engine. The GUI_NAME is a string. VERSION and SUBVERSION is <i><strong>one</strong></i> character.<br> This command will be send always. You don't need to answer because its only a information for the engine. I recommend that the engine not response. The idea behind this command is that the engine now know which special feature support the named GUI.<br> To make the GUI string clear the known GUIs will be predefined:<br> <br> gui arena = send by Arena<br> gui chessassistant = send by Chess Assistant<br> gui chessbase = send by ChessBase<br> gui chessmaster = send by ChessMaster<br> gui chesspartner = send by ChessPartner GUI<br> gui wb2uci = send by wb2uci adapter<br> gui xboard = send by Winboard/Xboard<br> <br> -This list is not completely and will be extend in the future.<br> -<br> -Example:<br> -Winboard / Xboard send:<br> -xboard\n<br> -gui xboard 4.2\n<br> -protover 2\n<br> -</font> -<p> greetings XBoard/Winboard developer Daniel
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