Author: Mogens Larsen
Date: 03:54:07 02/02/02
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On February 02, 2002 at 06:22:17, David Rasmussen wrote: >How does Tim Mann feel about all this? It seems that a lot more people are >willing to help with this Arena project than with winboard. Let's not forget >Tim's important work. Of course, it is entirely possible that the two will >coexist and some people might like winboard better. But it is also possible that >Arena will become 100% winboard compatible, gets ICS support, and then extends >the protocol and gets loads of other features so that it just ends up being the >defacto choice of interface. Who knows... Naturally I can't speak for Tim Mann, but I don't think (hope) that he has any problems with it. The difference between Arena and WinBoard development as I see it is that Tim Mann has limited time for developing WinBoard features much beyond the protocol additions. That's not a real problem as WinBoard will continue to lead the way with new specifications (given that the authors can agree, which is slightly more doubtful IMHO). I doubt that Tim would appreciate more or less valid comments from 150+ users in a short timespan. If I'm mistaken, it can be arranged ;-). I'm sure Martin Blume's patience will be worn thin after just a few weeks :-). In the case of Arena we have an author with a decent amount of development time available. Not to mention a GUI which have (I assume) been developed from scratch without too much ancient source to struggle with. In many ways the conditions are the same. The difference is time. Here Tim Mann relies on the engine authors to supply code for any features to be added, which virtually eliminates suggestions by ordinary users. At least if we are talking about major additions. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any contributions from all the capable engine authors recently beyond more or less silly protocol suggestions. That isn't really helpful IMO. I'm amazed that Tim Mann hasn't given up and left it to someone else. So I can assure you that my gratitude, and that of many others, is infinite. Arena isn't a replacement for me, but a supplement, though I imagine that quite a few users will prefer this interface over WinBoard due to ease of use and UCI compatability. But I'm tempted to ask a provokative question. Will the engine authors in the future leech on Martin Blume instead? :-) Regards, Mogens
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