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Subject: Re: Extensible Chess Interface (XCI) : updated draft

Author: Dieter Buerssner

Date: 00:25:00 03/15/05

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On March 14, 2005 at 12:45:22, Michael Yee wrote:

>The protocol proposal has been updated to reflect several good
>comments/suggestions.

I did not have time, to read it carefully. Few random thoughts, that came to
mind: I did not see multi-PV: probably overlooked it, if not should be added.
Searchmoves should be optional for the engine (as is multi-PV). It is not, in
UCI, still many engines don't support it (probably because the engine authors
found that it is a bit work to implement, also I think no other GUIs than all
the Shredder Classic versions supports it).

From your protocol I see not how pondering should work. Note, that however you
do it, it will probably be more complicated to implement from engine side, than
the much critisized UCI pondering. Perhaps one could think of a method that
supports both, UCI go ponder with ponder move/ ponderhit and a more general go
ponder without move.

Your description of level seems to be missing 40/90+15 sort time controls.

Setoptions seem to miss many things of UCI. Define some general options, that
should always mean the same (much like UCI): hash, TB-path, clear hash (this
last is not in UCI). Additionally to the UCI type options, options for file
and/or path names might be useful.

I see no way, how a GUI could drive a game analysis (which would include some
time control, not infinite) and the engine beeing aware of it (the reason
UCI_AnalyseMode was added). Also, who would a back to front analysis look?

Lance mentioned some internalization issue. I also thought about this, when I
implemented UCI for the first time. But I see no solution - Lance, do you have
any idea in mind? The only thing, I can think of would be to note the
(preferred) language from GUI to engine at the first command. An engine might
want to give options in different languages.

Another internationalization issue: May strings contain special chars? My engine
reports my name as "Dieter Buerssner", which is a typical transliteration to the
English alphabet of the proper "Dieter Bürßner". Shredder Classic can display
the proper spelling on my computer, but I always wondered what a user on say a
Russian or Chinese PC would see? Also, such things might be needed to be defined
for each OS seperately? Which would make them rather horrible for an engine
intended to be very portable.

>Even if people are dead set against introducing a new protocol into the mix, I'm
>curious what UCI fans think about some of the extensions. Specifically,
>
>- describing what options mean,

Yes, should be there (was also discussed as an addition to UCI).

Writing a GUI supporting all this will probably not be an easy task. Peter
Schäfer, would it be a lot of work to add to Jose? I know, that you did not like
the idea of a new protocol ...

Best regards,
Dieter



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