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Subject: Re: Extensible Chess Interface (XCI) : updated draft

Author: Reinhard Scharnagl

Date: 13:59:39 03/14/05

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On March 14, 2005 at 15:56:46, Tim Foden wrote:

>On March 14, 2005 at 12:45:22, Michael Yee wrote:
>
>>(2) New commands from GUI to engine : getstartpos, getmovelist, getresult
>>
>>This enables the protocol to be truly extensible since variants that aren't
>>officially supported by the GUI can still be supported by letting one engine be
>>the "referee" or "arbiter".
>
>Maybe it would be a good idea to:
>
>1) allow an extra third engine as a referee.  This could be useful in the case
>of two engines where you trust neither to be a referee.  A tried and trusted
>third could be used in this job.

This seems to be covered. But because of an initial lack of engines and for
testing purposes any engine should be usable as a referee. That is what I have
proposed. After some time special engines would qualify as good referees. But
more important is, that this approach would simplyfy the writing of a GUI.

Introducing a new game variant also would need to write only one engine instead
of having simultaneously an additional referee engine at hands.

>2) formalise what is required of a "referee" only.  This would allow a simple
>"referee engine" to be written, to perform arbritration only.

Because a so called referee engine alone would not make sense without playing
engines to be refereed, there is no need to write a reduced referee engine. May
be an early engine prototype would already be sufficent to test and support a
GUI. But it is of course better to replace it later by the completed engine,
because this would cover all needs.

I think it is time to make convergent builds of GUI and engine to refine that
XCI proposal by real practice.

Reinhard.



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