Author: Jay Urbanski
Date: 10:59:27 03/03/06
I'd like to get some comments on an idea that's been growing in the back of my head for some time now. The problem is that of opening books. We now have two open protocols for communication between engine and GUI with Winboard and UCI - but every GUI has chosen to go the route of a proprietary book format - presumably to lock users into that GUI. (Even Arena does this, something that puzzles me since it is free) This may be good for the vendors business models, but it bad for users since it limits choice. So what is the engine author to do? They can: A. Pick a GUI to support (and alienate users of other GUIs) B. Make an engine book (with almost certainly less features than the GUI books) C. Support all the GUIs (way too much effort, and almost certainly inconsistent quality of books) All of these have their shortcomings, so my proposal is the establishment of an open book format. The idea is that with one format option "B" could be a lot more attractive, especially if enough features were put into the book specification. A common objection to this idea is "It won't fly without support from the GUI vendors, and none of them will support it". I agree none of the GUI vendors are likely to support it at first (except maybe Arena?) but I contend that if enough engine authors support it, *and* we could get a decent book editor/viewer written so that users could view the book, tweak it, etc - it wouldn't matter whether the GUI authors support it. And if it became popular enough, the GUI vendors might add it as a feature due to customer demand. So I'd like comments/feedback/criticism from everyone. Book authors especially, what features would need to be present to make it a good format? As a user I would defnintely want book learning and an intuitive but flexible syntax to weight moves. Would an existing format like Polyglot be a good starting point? Would the Arena team consider donating the .ABK format as the basis? Would anyone be willing to donate programming skill & time toward a decent book editor/viewer? Am I the only one who cares about this? :)
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