Re: [XBoard-devel] Hi from a new member of the xboard team

[Byrial Jensen]

Den 20-12-2011 21:49, h.g. muller wrote:
> The warning that recommends use of parentheses. Unnecessary prentheses
> IMO are very detrimental, and very easily group things in a way that was
> not intended.
> E.g.
>
> ((((1*2)*3)*4) + (5*(6*(7*(8*9)) + (1*2))))
>
> is very hard to read compared to
>
> 1*2*3*4 + 5*(6*7*8*9 + 1*2)

That is a bad example as no compiler that I can imagine would suggest 
more parentheses in the latter expression.

> > It would nice to have a roadmap for the development of xboard.
> >
> > Which features should go into 4.6.0, and which into later versions?
> > Where do this aliennew branch at hgm.nubati.net fit in for this?
>
> Everything that is currently in master is intended to go into 4.6.0, and
> there are not many loose ends. (It was suggested I should add
> -afterTourney, -afterCycle and -afterRound options similar to
> -afterGame, and this seems a good idea, so I would like to include it in
> 4.6.0. But this is quite straightforward,)
>
> The aliennew brach contains a lot of changes directed at making WinBoard
> more generally useful as a GUI for any board game, also games not
> related to Chess (with other capture modes, such as Checkers, Reversi,
> Go and Ultima, with multiple moves per turn, such as Amazons). It
> implements features to give the engine more control over things that now
> are programmed explicitly in the GUI, like move legality checking, move
> interpretation (board update), setting up the initial position,
> assigning piece ID letters to the various pieces, determining the board
> format.

Interesting. I am not sure that it would be a good idea to give more 
tasks to the game engines. It would make it harder to make engines, and 
make the engines less portable to other interface programs as the 
distinction between gui and engine would be weakened.

But I also agree that it is a problem that xboard have to know the rules 
of many different games. Already now all this knowledge about many chess 
variants complicates the code too much, I think.

I would consider taking specific game knowledge out of xboard, and 
instead make a plugin-structure, so a module for the actual game can be 
loaded at run time. That would in some ways simplify the core code, and 
make it possible for everyone to write plugins for any game - much in 
the same way as everyone can now build their own engines if they wish to 
do so and have the necessary programming skills.

At the moment that is just a thought. But I think it is worth to consider.

> Because of these unsolved problems and lack of heavy-duty testing, plus
> the very legitimate question if we really want to expand the scope of
> XBoard beyond being an interface for Chess variants, I don't think it is
> wise to put anything that is now in aliennew into 4.6.0.

It could a long term goal for 5.0.

> > If we already have everything new for 4.6.0, then it would be time to
> > concentrate on bugfixing so it can be ready for release.
>
> Well, this is pretty much the situation, and there are only very few
> known bugs. (In fact, most were reported by you.) With the emphasis on
> 'known', because we can't really vouch for much testing of the new
> features. As you discovered yourself when you tried translation, one of
> the new features we also never exercise ourselves... I know of an issue
> with the initialization of the black clock, which unfortunately does not
> occur when I compile it, so that debugging is cumbersome. And there
> seems to be a general problem with all versions since 4.4.0 on newer
> versions of some Linux distributions (very large startup delay). It
> would be good if 4.6.0 would fix that (but not strictly necessary, as
> 4.5.3 has it too).

I can confirm from own experience with xboard 4.6 on Linux that it is 
somewhat slow to start up. I can do some profiling to see what is taking 
the time.

Regards,
- Byrial