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Subject: Re: A FEN definition oversight?

Author: David Rasmussen

Date: 18:44:13 02/01/03

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On February 01, 2003 at 16:27:08, Russell Reagan wrote:

>On February 01, 2003 at 14:50:41, David Rasmussen wrote:
>
>Ok I see your point. I don't think it's a big enough deal to change a standard
>though. It will not matter in the vast majority of positions. Ignoring it or
>not, no big deal usually.
>

What's the point of making a standard in the first place? Some of the main
reasons are formality and conciseness. A chess positions standard is not
important, really. It will not change the world in a big way. So the only hope
one can have about a standard is for it to be concise and complete. In this
case, the standard is not concise. My general life will not change much if the
FEN standard changes, either way. But my chess life, and especially chess
programming life will change in a fundamental way, since correctness is
paramount to me, and the FEN specification is not accurate, and there is no
reason for it not to be. There is no possible case where it is important or
reasonable that it contains a halfmove clock. If it did not, my program would be
simpler and more correct. Now it has to choose from a host of incorrect
solutions.

/David

>>(A chess
>>application XML specification would be a cool thing anyway, but that's another
>>discussion).
>
>I think this would be a good idea too. Many technologies (PC, PDA, cell-phone,
>etc.) are already implementing XML support, so this would be a nice thing to
>have.
>
>What do you envision a chess XML looking like?

I'm not quite there yet. A FEN without halfmove clock specified in XML would be
close, though.

/David



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