Author: Richard Pijl
Date: 05:45:41 07/15/05
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On July 15, 2005 at 06:32:18, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote: >Munjong, > >there is no need at all to establish an incompatible protocol. See e.g.: >http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/fullchess5b_e.html as an alterative. > Just to start: The chess960 extensions to the UCI protocol in _not_ incompatible with older UCI versions. All is well defined, and engines that do not support Chess960 are not bothered by its extensions. From all of your posts, your main concern seems to be the PGN, the castling move and the needs to let the GUI know that the engine supports the extensions. PGN has nothing to do with the UCI protocol (although things like FEN strings may be included in it). And the latter is necessary to provide a multiple purpose GUI in which new features can be introduced, like it was also done in UCI-II. Then the castling move remains, I'll take that one later. I happen to define a protocol to something which is: 1. Well defined 2. Fulfilling its purpose 3. Downwards compatible. Old engines can still be used, but obviously cannot use the new features (like Chess960). 4. Fault tolerant, preferably by keeping it as simple as possible. The Chess960 extensions comply with all four of them. In the proposal you've made I found point 4 very badly covered as you expect both GUI and Engine to handle ambiguities perfectly, i.e. not attach a rookfile to a castling flag or a castling mark to a kingmove when it is not necessary. When an engine or GUI makes mistakes in this, you'll get an 'imcompatible' FEN anyway. This is also a reason to encode castling moves as they are. If you define it _always_ as king takes own rook there is no ambiguity. As a bonus you're even getting the rook to use in the castle move. So please, can you stop complaining about not using your suggestions? And be grateful for the nice Chess960 GUI and well-defined extensions of UCI that Stefan made available? Btw, did you notice that some of your work was used? Ever noticed the starting position numbering for instance? Richard.
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