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Subject: Re: Is UCI a politically viable alternative to Winboard?

Author: Odd Gunnar Malin

Date: 15:50:05 01/25/02

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On January 25, 2002 at 17:37:15, Mike Hood wrote:

>From all that I've read about UCI, it seems to have several technical advantages
>over Winboard. But, as we all know, the best product doesn't always succeed.
>

My main consern for this German protocol is that there is no way to interfere
with it's features. Wasn't it the same people that was trying to take over the
pgn-standard by complaining that they had no way to interfere with it's feature.
My guess is that this protocol will lead the same destiny when this protocol
isn't hot longer for CB.
As it is it is only designed for the commercial engines, eg. books, learning
etc. is expected to be dealed with by the GUI and not by the engine therby the
perfomance of the engine is closely binded to the GUI.

Why are they changing the support away from Winboard towards this UCI. Maybe
because there have been some other commercial engines for the WB-protocol and
soon we also have Rebel. So if they proceed to support Winboard people would
only buy one program from CB and buy the rest from others. Ex. Chessmaster is a
lot cheaper than CB's engines and play with the same strength. Why buy
Fritz+Junior when you could get Fritz+The King much cheaper and now have added
all Chessmaster's feature to your collection.

For a protocol to be a standard the highest priority is to have an open
discussion about it's feature. Like the pgn had before it was settle down and
the Winboard have now.

Well you could say about Winboard that it is depended that Tim Mann take
interest in it but this has been the case for several years now and the protocol
is widly discussed (and feature added) in e-mail list.

I don't either see any problem if this protocol don't feed your needs. If you
make the GUI (like CB) there is nothing wrong with adding a special choice in
the protocol-list that interface all your engines feature to the GUI. CA has
done this for the Crafty engine.

Odd Gunnar



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