Author: Shep
Date: 01:13:48 08/25/99
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On August 25, 1999 at 00:37:59, Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com) wrote: >It is quite possible to make a program that shuttles data from one program to >another. Programs that watch the screen for changes exist (e.g., Gif-gIf-Gif, >from http://www.peda.com, for most flavors of Windows, and for Mac), and >programs that take action, like scripting programs (e.g., QuicKeys for PC >and Mac, http://www.celsoft.com/obasic/, etc.). > >It is quite feasible to write a program that would connect the two, without >touching or modifying the CM6000 code in any way, if all you want is to set >up positions in Fritz, and have CM6000 analyze them. With the fritz engine >interface specs, it would be even easier to write a module that interfaced >between Fritz and CM (or another other chess program) using a scripting program >to provide input to CM, and a screen observer to process the output from CM. Sounds mega-tricky to me. There's a _huge_ difference between just grabbing windows contents as raw graphics data (as Gif-gIf-giF does) and actually parsing the contents in any way. (No wait, now that I think of it... will give this a thought.) IMHO it would be much easier just to try to decode the internal control protocol of the GUI<->engine bus. (Don't forget, since engine and GUI are written by different people, CM is just like Fritz with the engine embedded in the .exe, but much different from truly "integrated" programs such as Rebel or MChess.) >It would also be a lot of work ... probably much less work than writing a >chess program, though, and very useful when it was done, though a I think anyone with a) good knowledge of x86 assembly and b) lots of time could possibly do this (given that I have seen people do things that were much harder than that). In fact, I have tried this for about an hour, but found I don't have enough of both a) and b)... ;-)) As for the legal issue, I think this is nearly unimportant. Whether reverse-engineering is legal or not, the moral point is that writing such a "hack" does not harm the developers of either Fritz or CM in any way (provided no-one is spreading the resulting "CM for Fritz" illegally). The whole point of reverse engineering being illegal is simply to protect programmers from having their ideas stolen by disassembling the code (besides, there are e.g. passages in German copyright law that talk about reverse engineering being legal if done with the purpose of "ensuring interoperability with other programs" - honi soit qui mal y pense :). --- Shep
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