Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 10:54:21 03/09/05
Go up one level in this thread
On March 09, 2005 at 12:13:26, Anthony Cozzie wrote: >After the post on how Daniel Mehrmann is still working on XBoard/Winboard, I >immediately starting thinking of ways to waste his time. My question is: Does >Winboard really have any advantages over UCI any more? > >The Anthony WB/UCI comparison: > >+UCI: > >Interface is cleaner & easier to implement, not being based on the crappy GNU >chess protocol. > >Supports Multiple PVs, refutations, etc. > >Graphical configuration of engines. > >+WinBoard: > >Can operate in text mode. > >And this comparison is (obviously) quite favorable to UCI, although I may have >missed things. Anyway, I'd be willing to help Daniel out over the next few >weeks if it meant a new version of Xboard with UCI support, and I'm guessing >there would be a few other people willing to help out as well. > >anthony UCI is a pretty sports car. Winboard is a reliable tank. Each has it's own pros and cons, but Winboard can get you where you need to go, while UCI may not. If you ponder and learn just like Shredder, then you're in luck. Otherwise, you have some hacks to implement to work around the UCI protocol. If I'm going to do just as much work (if not more) to implement UCI, then I'll just use Winboard. I know Winboard will let me do what I want, and I have much more faith in Winboard (the program) than any other GUI. -UCI Doesn't support learning. You can work around it, but it's a pain in the ass. Only supports pondering in one way. Again, you can work around it, but again, it's a pain in the ass. Assumes you can trust the GUI, which so far has apparently been too difficult for most GUI creators. Can't trust any ChessBase GUI (hash table memory bug), can't trust Arena (UCI engine will randomly quit responding when playing on ICS, Arena will randomly crash while playing a computer match, and so on). I can trust the Winboard GUI. If Winboard gets UCI support, then maybe this drawback will go away. Can't kibitz on ICS. Maybe the GUI that we can't trust will support some hack work around method, or maybe not. If Winboard with UCI support would still allow some Winboard commands like "tellics", this drawback would go away. I think Winboard and UCI both offer some good ideas, but SMK has made it pretty clear that UCI will never offer some of the things Winboard offers, which means we will have to continue to jump through hoops to get the functionality we want, or we will have to hope GUI creators implement the protocol extensions that we want (and that we can trust those extensions). If I were going to use UCI, I would only consider using it in combination with an open source Winboard adapter like Polyglot, so that I could add things to the adapter that UCI doesn't support without having to rely on the GUI to handle things correctly. I would probably end up using a pseudo-UCI protocol and have the adapter make a few changes to allow me to ponder the way I want to, handle learning the way I want to, and so on. So basically I wouldn't support UCI. I'd support a hybrid protocol that pulls the things I like from both protocols, which would be of use only to myself as I would not be interested in supporting it for everyone else who does things a little differently and uses a different OS, and so on. To me UCI seems like a nice sports car, which is great until the city starts doing construction at the end of your street for two years (as they are doing on mine). Then the fast, pretty sports car can't leave the street because it's so low to the ground it would bottom out on the torn up road (I'm not kidding, it wouldn't make it in or out of my street). You could try calling the city and complaining, as I have done since even my Honda scrapes the road as I leave for work, but so far they just implement a hack and pour some asphalt to kind of make the road drivable (until their giant machines tear it up when they drive over it tomorrow). Winboard is like the proverbail tank that can do 90 miles per hour across rocks and swamps and get 100 miles to the gallon, which of course requires a bit more work to do some things, but in that respect it is no different from UCI, and at least with Winboard you can be reasonably sure your extra effort (which doesn't even involve having to hack around the protocol) will produce the desired effect. MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES: http://100777.com/node/612/print
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