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Subject: Re: Chessbase engine interface protocol

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 11:28:45 06/08/03

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On June 08, 2003 at 13:51:41, Uri Blass wrote:

>What is the advantage of the official Microsoft protocol?
>Based on your post it only has disadvantages.

There is an advantage, for Microsoft. If you use their "recommendation", then
all of the sudden you've written a lot of code (which for some reason Microsoft
likes to require you to do to use any of their protocols/APIs/etc.) and you're
either stuck with using only Windows, or you have to make some major
modifications to your code.

>I do not see the problem.
>If people use buggy engines then it is their problem.

The problem is that a DLL doesn't work like a Winboard engine. A DLL is part of
the same process, so if the engine is written as a DLL, and the engine crashes,
the ChessBase GUI crashes too. In Winboard, the GUI is a seperate process from
the engine, so if the engine crashes, Winboard or Arena can say, "the engine
crashed, I'll restart it" and go on.

We are very fortunate to have had founders of the computer chess community who
knew what they were doing, like Tim Mann. I think it's no coincidence that he
has a background in unix. He made good choices that have made it easy for
programmers to create Winboard engines. Just output your text, no TCP/IP, DLLs,
etc. You don't have to know the first thing about pipes to write a winboard
engine (although it doesn't hurt).

Micrsoft has taken a page from the knowledge of the slave owners of the past.
Keep people uneducated and make them rely on you. Then you can feed them crap
and they'll smile and ask for more.



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