Author: Keith Ian Price
Date: 11:37:11 09/12/98
Go up one level in this thread
On September 11, 1998 at 21:09:32, Tim Mirabile wrote: >On September 10, 1998 at 22:46:01, Keith Ian Price wrote: > >>The only trouble I see with this, is that this has been available for some time >>without any programmers save Bob and some other freeware programs supporting it. >>If we declare a subset of it to be a 'standard', what incentive will there be to >>have it included in commercial programs? The way Auto232 got to be the current >>'standard' is by implementing the same double parsing scheme that Bob complained >>about, in order to trick the commercial programs into thinking they were >>receiving commands through their normal interface. Once it became the standard, >>then the commercials began including code for it in their programs. A standard >>is useless if no one implements it. > >Compare this to the implementation of the PGN standard. If the standard is >well-defined and easy to implement I think it will be implemented widely because >no author would want to be one of the few who don't have it. > >While many people don't have two computers for Auto232, just about all of us can >play over FICS. But how many commercial programs have automatic interfaces for ICC/FICS? I would like this, but they seem afraid to implement it. Then we could have some increase in Human/Computer matches with programs other than Crafty, Ferret, TCB, et. al. How can they be convinced to put this in? I like the idea of a black box that communicates over serial cables, networks, e-mail, or FICS without the program having to know what is what. Just send a standard message to the black box, which does the conversion, protocol for whatever medium is used, and timing synch, legality check, and possibly tournament management, etc. It could even translate between SAN and coordinate algebraic, if the two programs were incompatible in that regard. It should also allow a FEN or EPD import to resume a game or to start from a given position easily. If it is free and easy to implement, then soon it will be ubiquitous, and they will feel compelled to include it. kp
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.