Author: Adrien Regimbald
Date: 09:56:38 08/04/00
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Hi, >I don't know why there aren't more programs that are free and do Winboard's job, >that's always confused me. If you put out a program that did nothing but acted >as an interface like Winboard, and didn't even have the ability to play games >online, there would still be allot of people who'd be glad to use it. Because >as good as Winboard is, you can get tired of looking at it after a while when >you use Winboard engines often enough. I think the answer here is very simple: writing a high quality, stable, and fully featured graphical interface of any sort is a MAJOR pain in the ass. I think that programmers in general don't like this task, and in particular most programmers interested in chess would be more inclined to have some fun and write an engine. Combine the fact that writing such an interface would be annoying with the fact that there would be no financial renumeration for the task since you want it to be free, I don't find it the least bit surprising that there aren't more choices available. Most of the free programs you will find for the DL are done by people who enjoyed writing that program as a hobby, something to do in their spare time. Expecting someone to do something they don't like during their spare time is a bit silly. What you're asking is sort of like this: Why don't more gardners grow this cool plant I would really like to see that takes long tedious hours of constant work to grow, isn't terribly interesting to watch grow, and to top it all off doesn't produce anything of value. Just look at chess interfaces to ICSes - there are many many many less of these than there are chess programs, and the programs that _do_ exist for free tend to lose interest from their authors quite quickly. AFAIK, WinBoard is the _ONLY_ really good free ICS interface that has been around for a long time that is still being supported by the author.. Why? Because as I said, writing graphical interfaces is a pain in the ass! :P Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a new choice in this field as well .. I'm just saying there are reasons for there not being others, and it's not very likely that there will be others any time soon. Regards, Adrien.
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