Author: Wayde Beasley
Date: 08:40:11 01/06/01
Go up one level in this thread
On January 05, 2001 at 23:16:15, Tim Mann wrote: >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. Midleading because my ideas are moving targets right now! Perhaps it's more accurate to state that the ideas and functionality of Winboard should be the springboard for something better. > >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. You're right. And I use Linux too. But, as a hack/kludge programmer I had to go with "programming for dummies" -- you see, VB6 allows the idiot that I am to throw together an interface very quickly. Menus, MDI forms, list boxes, text boxes, labels, board diagrams -- it's not much more than a cut and paste operation on steroids. Mann apparently can get no one to help out with Winboard and is the de facto el presidente of the software. I looked at the code and am too dumb to help out. If I could, I would b/c I don't like re-inventing the wheel. But, if I cannot help Mann and he says nobody else is helping him, yet I still want to do the Freeboard thing, then by golly I'm stuck with VB6. [no, I ain't going to learn C, period end paragraph] So, no, Freeboard is no replacement, but I hope that by dumbing down the programming of the interface, perhaps other dummies will feel less intimidated when it comes to adding GUI components. >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. It just seems to me that things like this are no-brainers under VB6 b/c, like I said, it's not much more than a cut and paste operation - once the nitty gritty of chess engine communication is hammered out. And I got the redirection of stdin/stdout done -- I am now just cleaning up and debugging the parsing of the stdout received by the GUI. > >> 3. Ability to change engines while WB is running. > >That would be nice too -- probably someday. That will be in Freeboard. > >> 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. :-) Yuck here too. That's kid stuff -- but anyone else is welcome. > >> 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. > What about just using truetype fonts for the board instead of bitmaps -- isn't that what Fritz does? >> 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 Tell me I am wrong, but it seems that Mann's xboard implements its own widgets from scratch -- why not utilize gnome or QT/KDE widgets? Would that make things a lot easier? If not, why not? Also, gnome-chess looks pretty good -- why not just bust out and get that proggie up to Xboard standards? - W.
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