Author: Tim Mann
Date: 20:16:15 01/05/01
Go up one level in this thread
The thread title is slightly misleading, as Wayde has said that he is seeking a wishlist of things that should be in his Freeboard program and are not in WinBoard. If you're actually wishing for an improvement to go into WinBoard itself, please email the suggestion to me. I might not see it if you post here; I read this forum somewhat irregularly. Unfortunately, there seems to be no hope that Freeboard can replace xboard/WinBoard in the future, since it is being written in Visual Basic and thus will run only on Windows, not on Unix. I'd be quite happy if someone would write a program that completely replaces xboard/WinBoard without missing any major features, since then I could quit working on it and go do something else with that time. :-) Here are comments on some of the suggestions people have made in various places in the thread, viewing them as things that might go into WinBoard itself. > winboard including a legality check of the moves > which have been sent by the engine(s). That would be very simple to add; 99.9% of the code is there already. Right now WinBoard knows when an engine's move is illegal, but it gives the engine the benefit of the doubt and allows the move anyway, in case the engine is playing a chess variant that WinBoard doesn't fully understand. This is probably not a very good idea. Instead, maybe I should allow illegal moves from an engine if the GUI's TestLegality option is turned off, but reject them if it is on. However, I need to decide what should happen in all cases where an engine tries to make an illegal move: engine vs. local human (or analysis mode), engine vs. local engine, engine vs. ICS opponent. > 1. Easier interface to add new engines without editing any .ini files. I agree and was hoping to get something into 4.2.x, but didn't find time. > Even the .ini file usage is not very user friendly (double slashes...) This is improved in 4.2.0beta by moving the engine lists to a separate file and removing one level of quoting, but the separate file has caused some problems, so I might have to change it further. > 2. The PV is not shown if it is even 6+ moves long, the forward-backward > buttons are in wrong place. I'd like to make it so that you can always get the PV in a separate window, as in Analysis mode, so that it can be as long as desired. Then there would be no need to move the buttons. Haven't gotten to that yet, though. > 3. Ability to change engines while WB is running. That would be nice too -- probably someday. > 4. Remove the stupid board size configuration: "Titanic"...come on! The normal > windows sizing should be enough. You'd deny me my little bit of humor, with the silly size names? :-) You can ignore that menu and resize with the mouse, of course, so it does no harm. > 1) LAN or TCP/IP support Try the /firstHost and /secondHost feature, using the rsh server that Dan Newman contributed if you're on Windows, or the rsh server that comes with Unix. This lets engines run on a different host than WinBoard, connected via TCP/IP. You can get Dan's program from http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html -- look near the bottom of the page. > (so we could get rid of auto232 at last) Of course, rsh still doesn't let you get rid of auto232, because some commercial engines support auto232 but don't support the WinBoard protocol. > 3) Possibility to easily send whatever command I want to my program > and displaying that programs output in a separate window. You can send commands with Shift+1 or Shift+2. However, in the protocol there is no way to tell what specific output came in response to a particular command, so there is no way to pop up a window with the response. I guess there could be a window that displays all the winboard.debug output, which includes all commands to and from the engines. > 4) Automatic tournament feautures I won't be doing anything on that beyond the existing /matchGames feature, which plays a two-engine match of several games. Multi-engine tournaments seem like a good thing to put in a separate program, which could perhaps fire up WinBoard to actually play out each game. Hasn't anyone written such a program yet? > on ICS, if the connection goes down for some > reason, Winboard pops up a box notifying me that the connection has been > closed. Would be nice if Winboard could be set to wait 5 seconds and try to > reconnect You can solve this by running WinBoard from a .bat file that reconnects for you. There is an example on my Web pages, in topic [B.23] of the FAQ, http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard/FAQ.html . > It would also be good to have an option to keep your engine pondering if the > opponent disconnects. This caused problems in the ICC CC tournaments; an > entire permanent brain would be lost every time the opponent left and the > game was adjourned. Hmm, I never thought of that. Good point. > A movelist would be tremendous. Someone donated one for xboard, and it's in 4.2.0beta. Unfortunately, it's rather slow due to limitations of the implementation technique that was chosen. Anyone care to do one for WinBoard? At least there are minimal hooks in the backend now to support the xboard movelist. > 1) 3D graphics Yuck. :-) > 2) Change the pieces fonts/ layouts (as in ChessPartner) xboard allows different piece sets, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to load .bmp files at runtime into a Windows program (perhaps an embarrassing admission). That's really just about all that's needed. > Some kind of graphic representation of material balance would be an > improvement. I've never wanted this, but some folks do ask for it. It's nice when you first start observing a game, but if you're actually playing, you ought to know whether you're ahead or behind on material... > I'm used to the Fritz 6 gui and just a quick glance can give a general idea of > the material balance. Also a quick glance at the evaluation profile chart can > tell how the game has progressed. I've never seen the Fritz GUI. What's the evaluation profile chart? A history of what the evaluation has been on each past move? --Tim
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