Author: Reinhard Scharnagl
Date: 14:44:17 06/13/04
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Well I do not know, whether it would help to explain those points here, but it is a fact, that UCI and Winboard handle FRC very different. And its only up to flexible GUIs like Arena today to cover such weaknesses. 1) Winboard does not support FEN position strings for all WBx versions, but both (WB and UCI) have to support extended FRC-FEN to be fully FRC aware, because there FRC positions exist, not expressable in normal FEN. 2) Winboard handles FRC as a variant, which it is not at all. It is a compatible upper set of chess. Having supported FRC-FEN strings, there would be no need to distingush between 'normal', 'fischerandom' and 'nocastle'. The engine simply has to signal to the GUI its FRC awareness, what could be done easyly in UCI. The GUI then is deciding, whether the involved engines would play FRC and then support a appropriate starting position as FEN string. 3) a FRC aware engine is always playing FRC, there is not need to switch between any modes. 4) in Winboard there is a formal inconsistence concerning the encoding of castlings. Because of the inherent identification of all possible FEN positions it makes no sense to demand a different encoding of castlings in those 'variants' as specified for 'fischerandom'. UCI has a lack of specification in that case but also no contradiction. A possible solution to that dilemma is descripted at a page of my site, and in slightly different form implemented within the Arena GUI. [http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/fullchess5b_e.html] Regards, Reinhard.
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