Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 19:23:41 10/11/99
Go up one level in this thread
On October 11, 1999 at 14:10:01, Robert Pawlak wrote:
[snip]
>The people I know that are doing cross-platform development use Qt and cygnus
>products. Disclaimer - I am not one of these people :-)
>
>As far as popularity goes, I think if you write for linux, then you will be
>restricting the audience significantly for your product. That being said, any
>chess program with a decent engine and some database features will have a
>captive market. The only real alternative at this moment is Xboard, which does
>have some limitations.
I like Xboard/Winboard better than any other chess interface -- especially the
commercial ones. The worst interface I know of is CM, which is also the most
popular *shrug*.
>Personally, I would like to see a good linux chess program, somewhat along the
>likes of Fritz, but I am probably in the minority right now. When win2k comes
>out, expect to see the FUD poured out of Microshaft at an incredible rate. Since
>MS has a heavy influence on some of the computer magazines, you can expect to
>see at least a few comparisons that cast doubt on the viability of Linux.
>Regardless of the merits of the OS, bad press can really keep people away.
Crafty and Phalanx are both of excellent quality. Crafty is nearly on a par
with the commercial engines. Perhaps better in some particular cases. I
suspect that the Linux audience has in Crafty + Xboard + {one of the chess
database systems mentioned here for Linux but I have not tried} will suit all of
the current user's needs. The actual market for those using Linux and who are
willing to shell out to buy a chess program is (a wild guess by me) very small.
>Bottom line - my uneducated opinion is to hedge your bets and stay platform
>independent as long as possible. Frank made a good suggestion regarding Qt...
Now here, I could not possibly agree more.
In 1988 Microsoft said that the future was OS/2. We should all spend our effort
porting towards that aim, as it was the wave of the future.
Oops.
Predicting the future is nearly impossible. Soooooooo.....
Make the part of your program that can be maximally portable as portable as
possible.
Separate the interface parts out and make them as abstract as possible the the
system specific calls as isolated as possible.
Then you are ready to handle any direction that the market may turn. Five years
from now it may be Windows 2003 Rev 92B that is the rage. Or maybe Linux or
Mac. In my fond hope it would be OpenVMS -- but I won't hold my breath for that
one!!!
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