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Subject: Re: Draft of revised xboard/winboard engine protocol

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:38:27 12/10/00

Go up one level in this thread


On December 10, 2000 at 00:04:41, Chessfun wrote:

>On December 09, 2000 at 15:02:40, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 09, 2000 at 06:11:44, Chessfun wrote:
>>
>>>On December 08, 2000 at 14:17:47, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 08, 2000 at 14:06:15, Dieter Buerssner wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On December 08, 2000 at 13:53:12, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>This is not what I wanted to see happen after publishing our UCI engine <-> user
>>>>>>interface protocol. Winboard hasn?t moved for years and now that our protocol is
>>>>>>published for a week suddenly all the improvements we added in UCI are copied to
>>>>>>winboard. I published UCI to have ONE clear and easy engine protocol. Well, UCI
>>>>>>is free, but still I don?t really like that.
>>>>>
>>>>>Stefan, please not, that these changes were discussed in the chess engines
>>>>>mailing list, before you published UCI. For my part, I made some suggestions,
>>>>>(and some of those are part of the new draft Tim has shown), before I ever
>>>>>heard of UCI. I would assume, that others didn't know of UCI, when they
>>>>>thought about enhancements of the WB protocol. So the "suddenly one week
>>>>>after ..." seems to be an accident.
>>>>>
>>>>>Regards,
>>>>>Dieter
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I didn't know that as I am not on the list.
>>>>I am sorry.
>>>>
>>>>   Stefan
>>>
>>>I thought I once read that Tim planned no further changes to Winboard due to
>>>time limitations and that others maybe would continue. I know there was talk
>>>about adapting it to also run tournaments.
>>>
>>>But it would seem to me from that alone Stefan has a reasonable point.
>>>
>>>Sarah.
>>
>>
>>I disagree mildly.  IE winboard/xboard are _free_ programs that almost all
>>the non-commercial authors are using for development, testing, and even playing
>>on chess servers.  Adopting a brand new protocol is not easy.  And then the
>>question is "how do we test?"  By then writing a GUI or interface that uses
>>that new protocol?  That is a lot of work, which is why most of us still use
>>winboard/xboard...  to avoid doing that.
>>
>>Xboard has a few holes...  but overall it works flawlessly on the chess servers,
>>and as a GUI front-end for engines.  I don't see any reason to toss it out...
>>it has had major changes in the last year or two (animated piece movement,
>>drag/drop graphics, etc...) I would assume it will continue to be developed.
>
>Don't get me wrong. Winboard is truly a great program, but I just thought Tim
>was no longer going to upgrade it.
>
>Sarah.


I'm not sure why.  Remember that we have had a half-dozen new versions this
year alone, as we are now up to 4.1...



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