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Re: [XBoard-devel] Polyglot 2.0


From: h.g. muller
Subject: Re: [XBoard-devel] Polyglot 2.0
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:13:26 +0200



I'm not in favor of that. First, the major version change is not appropriate. Second, I strongly recommend not using a customized polyglot. Doing so will cause users issues when they try to use versions they find elsewhere, particularly if they can't find compatible ones anywhere else. If UCI support is that important, integrate it into winboard instead. I'm all in favor of making the two projects compatible with each other, but making a unique one for a winboard release seems very bad.

The problem is that almost all Polyglot versions that are around do
not support the extensions of WB protocol offered by 4.4.0.
It is unavoidable there will be user issues when they use such
some versions. The version now supplied by Debian and Ubuntu
is as obsolete as WinBoard 4.2.7. If WinBoard protocol is extended,
the extensions wil not be effective for UCI engines unless there will
be a new Polyglot implementing those exensions. I don't see how this
could be avoided.

Why would we want to intentionally ship them a Polyglot version that
breaks part of the functionality of WinBoard?

I don't see this as a matter of customizing. This Polyglot 2.0 (or whatever
we would call it, that is really a separate, not so important issue) is a
universally applicable Polyglot. It is not that I want to completely overhaul
Polyglot for every future XBoard release we are going to do, and change
things back and forth just because they are slightly more convenient
for the particular XBoard version. But we are the ones responsible for
developing WB protocol, and this unavoidably strongly affects Polyglot
and any other adapter. So the future will see a gradual evolution of
XBoard and Polyglot towards more powerful protocol, supplying the
functionality modern Chess engines require. This Polyglot is merely
one step along that line, not so much a customization.

Of course we take etreme care in developing WB protocol in a way
to provide backward compatibility. People used to working with older
Polyglots and older GUIs in the old way (making polyglot.ini files etc.)
would not notice any difference. Using old Polyglots with WB 4.4.0
will also not cause any issues when you don't use any of the new
4.4.0 features. E.g. the Engine #1 Settings dialog will simply remain
empty when they use a Polyglot that does not support the WB option
feature, or they will discover that the engine doesn't respond when they
alter the hash size or number of CPUs in the GUI settings when they
use a Polyglot that doesn't support the WB memory or core command.
Or that they can alter the Engine Settings, but not save them, when
they use a Polyglot that does not support a save option. Those kind
of issues are unavoidable, but I don't see that as a reason to force
them on everyone (by not including such new functionality in XBoard
or shipping it with a Polyglot that breaks it).




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