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Subject: Re: UCI (=universal chess interface)

Author: David Eppstein

Date: 10:56:25 11/29/00

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On November 28, 2000 at 09:15:30, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen wrote:

>
>UCI (=universal chess interface)
>
>This is the description of a new interface between a chess engine and a
>graphical user interface called UCI. It was designed by Rudolf Huber and Stefan
>Meyer-Kahlen and is used in the chess engines SOS 11/2000 and Shredder 5 as well
>as in the Shredder 5 graphical user interface. Also the new version 6 of Chess
>Assistant will support this engine interface. The UCI interface is free to use
>for everyone, so you can use it in your own program without any licence fees or
>restrictions. If you make any additions or modifications to the interface it
>might be a good idea to contact me before so we can keep compatibility.
>
>The interface is similar to Winboard, keeping its easiness but eliminating the
>disadvantages of it. It should be not much work to adept an chess engine to UCI
>especially if it’s already supporting winboard. It is also possible to support
>both UCI and winboard in the same exe file.
>
>What are the advantages of UCI compared to Winboard?
>
>·	All engine options can be modified within the graphical user interface so
>there is no need to deal with ini files.
>·	Much better capabilities to display search information of the engine,
>·	Definition of a principal variation is included,
>·	It’s more robust, the GUI always knows exactly what the engine is doing.
>·	It’s supporting multi variation mode,
>·	Support for endgame tablebases
>·	Flexible time controls,
>·	The engine can identify itself
>·	UCI is supporting a copy protection mechanism (for the professionals)
>
>
>The advantages to other engine interfaces are:
>
>·	It’s free
>·	It’s easy to use
>·	It’s easy to extent
>·	It’s independent of the operating system
>·	It’s capable of network play
>
>
>Below is the “formal” definition of the engine interface,  if you have any more
>question concerning UCI I will try to answer them.
>
>Stefan
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>* The specification is independend of the operationg system. For Windows,
>  the engine is a normal exe file, either a console or "real" windows
>application.
>
>* all communication is done via standard input and output with plain text
>commands,

These two statements contradict each other.  Some of us run operating systems
without any "pipe" facility (i.e., MacOS versions 9 or earlier).



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