TalkChess.com

[H.G.Muller]

I have implemented a new experimental feature in WinBoard, and I would like to know opinions about it. It is intended to offer a solution for the problem that you see all engines as a huge, unstructured pool, which makes it very hard to find the one you need if you have many. (I know, you could sort them alphabetically...)

The new fature allows you to group engines in the list of installed engines (in the ini file), by enclosing them in lines # NAME and # end .

[H.G.Muller]

Some screen shots:



The top-level view of the engine list



View after opening the 'Xiangqi Engines' group



Recently used engines can be recalled directly from the menu

[Julien MARCEL]

I'm surprised no Winboard user answered you, H.G., because despite I use Arena on a daily basis I think your new idea is very good!
_________________
"A witty quote proves nothing." (Voltaire)
Author of Prédateur chess engine: http://predateur-chess.blogspot.fr

[H.G.Muller]

Thanks! I guess some improvement could still be made, though. With these condensed lists, listboxes seem to have a definite advantage over comboboxes. When the list does not fit, scrolling through the listbox is almost as much work as opening the combobox: you have to go with the mouse pointer first to a place you don't want to be (the scroll thumb), and then have to return to the selection area. But when everything fits, it is annoying that the combobox closes after selecting the group, and you have to open it again before you can see what was inside. A listbox could have shown the group contents immediately.

Another issue I still have to solve is how to conveniently create and manage the groups. Currently this can only be done by direct editing of the list (for which there fortunately is a menu item).

Perhaps it would be an idea to allow people to select a group after they selected an engine (in stead of pressing OK), with as a result that the engine would be moved into that group. (I.e it would remember the last selected engine, and the last group selected after it, and when you OK at that point it would move it there.) On a new install you could select the group without ever having selected an engine (since you entered the dialog).

That only leaves the problem of how to create new groups.

[Giorgio Medeot]

Hi H.G.,

my two cents:
Regarding the engine grouping, it seems a very nice idea. The use of a combobox in this context is a little bit unnatural though, but I can understand that you don't want to revolutionize the gui, since the gtk port is arriving, sooner or later. A logical choice would be a treeview widget: that way browsing the nested groups would be quite more effective. In that scenario, a nice addition could be a text box in which one could type e.g "cr" and have the list shows all and only the partial matches (say some version of crafty and critter...). BTW, with such a "search bar", the need for a mean of grouping engines would be a lot less severe.

Back to the topic, from the post I didn't understand how to go back to a parent group, once you have entered one and you realized that what you were looking for was elsewhere (sorry I can't just try it right now, I'm at work).

Cheers,

Giorgio

[H.G.Muller]

[Gabor Szots]

Hi HG,

It seems to me the grouping has merit separating engines playing different variations. Otherwise I can't see a particular benefit; whenever I install a new engine I put it in its aphabetical place.
_________________
Gabor Szots

CCRL testing group

[Roger Brown]

[H.G.Muller]

[H.G.Muller]

Btw, Guenther Simon just pointed out a bug that strikes when you have more than 1000 engines installed. I fixed that a few minutes ago, so people with many engines that want to try it had better download again.