Author: Tim Mann
Date: 14:00:00 01/18/01
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I'd like to point out that xboard has always accepted SAN output from the engine, and the protocol spec has always said that it does. This is not a recent change; it has been true throughout xboard's 9 year lifetime. Strictly speaking, GUIs that accept only coordinate notation are not implementing the full protocol and are risking being incompatible with some engines. It's understandable that people would do that, since the protocol spec in this case describes xboard's behavior (which is very liberal in what it will accept) instead of prescribing exactly what the engine should do. Other GUI authors probably don't want to accept all the weird stuff that xboard is willing to swallow. It would be better if I had written that only SAN and coordinate notation are allowed. The only thing that has changed in protocol version 2 is that GUI will now also generate SAN /input/ to the engine if the engine requests it. This prompted Bob to move to using SAN in both directions -- sending it to the GUI and asking to receive it. The problem is that Crafty 18 sends SAN to the GUI even in protocol version 1, which is legal according to the protocol spec, but unfortunately breaks some GUIs that don't implement that part of the spec. I'd also like to point out that John Merlino has posted that the next downloadable upgrade patch to CM8000 will make it accept SAN output from the engine. I don't think Crafty 18 is the only engine that needs this. --Tim
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