GNU Chess 6 (= Fruit)

[hgm]

Now that Fabien has transferred the copyrights on Fruit 2.1 to the Free Software Foundation, it seems GNU is planning to release it as "GNU Chess 6", together with Polyglot for XBoard compatibility.

Does anyone know who is in charge of this? (Fabien?) I would like to contact them to make sure a Polyglot that supports the new XBoard protocol will be used...

[Xann]

Does anyone know who is in charge of this? (Fabien?) I would like to contact them to make sure a Polyglot that supports the new XBoard protocol will be used...

Yes, they contacted me.
But let's chat a bit first.

It seems to me that they are struggling supporting the older xboard protocol already.
The reason is as follows:

Even if you ask for the "xboard" mode on the command line, the way I understood it it doesn't connect to PolyGlot directly.
They process the input with their own code, perhaps to update the internal board or something.
On top of that, they didn't seem to know the protocol well at all, and I had to give them a pointer on a precise description (hence my usage of the word "struggling").
I suggested that they connect directly to PolyGlot while in "xboard" mode though, and maybe they changed that.

I am using a computer I am not familiar with at the moment, and I would appreciate if you could have a look yourself.
I am going to give you a download link in a private message or email.
Note that this is an alpha release.

Fabien.

[Dann Corbit]

Does anyone know who is in charge of this? (Fabien?) I would like to contact them to make sure a Polyglot that supports the new XBoard protocol will be used...

Yes, they contacted me.
But let's chat a bit first.

It seems to me that they are struggling supporting the older xboard protocol already.
The reason is as follows:

Even if you ask for the "xboard" mode on the command line, the way I understood it it doesn't connect to PolyGlot directly.
They process the input with their own code, perhaps to update the internal board or something.
On top of that, they didn't seem to know the protocol well at all, and I had to give them a pointer on a precise description (hence my usage of the word "struggling").
I suggested that they connect directly to PolyGlot while in "xboard" mode though, and maybe they changed that.

I am using a computer I am not familiar with at the moment, and I would appreciate if you could have a look yourself.
I am going to give you a download link in a private message or email.
Note that this is an alpha release.

Fabien.

I did not like what they did with the v5 GnuChess. They clearly made a serious effort to morph it so that it would not work under Windows. There is no other possible explanation for their architecture choices.

Operating system hostility is as big a pile of foolishness as racism.

[hgm]

I am using a computer I am not familiar with at the moment, and I would appreciate if you could have a look yourself.

OK, thanks. It seems they are struggling to do something that has already been done (namely make an adapter that at the front-end understands both XBoard and UCI protocol, and at the back-end converses with Fruit in UCI), and is not needed (because current XBoard spawns Polyglot itself when running UCI engines. If they really want to convert Fruit into an XBoard engine, they would save themselves a lot of trouble by contacting me anyway; I probably already have the code for that lying around...

Who is running this show? Is it Stuart and Kong Sian?

[mhull]

Operating system hostility is as big a pile of foolishness as racism.

Someone should have told that to the designers of Windows.

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/evilandrude.html

[Dann Corbit]

Operating system hostility is as big a pile of foolishness as racism.

Someone should have told that to the designers of Windows.

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/evilandrude.html

If the Windows designers worked to make something gratuitously incompatible, then if the Unix community does the same thing, then they are stooping to the same arrogant stupidity.

IMO-YMMV

[michiguel]

Operating system hostility is as big a pile of foolishness as racism.

Someone should have told that to the designers of Windows.

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/evilandrude.html

If the Windows designers worked to make something gratuitously incompatible, then if the Unix community does the same thing, then they are stooping to the same arrogant stupidity.

IMO-YMMV

"They are eating the cannibals" Jorge Luis Borges, when he was asked about the military dictatorship vs. the guerrillas in the "dirty war" in Argentina.

Miguel

[mhull]

Operating system hostility is as big a pile of foolishness as racism.

Someone should have told that to the designers of Windows.

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/evilandrude.html

If the Windows designers worked to make something gratuitously incompatible, then if the Unix community does the same thing, then they are stooping to the same arrogant stupidity.

IMO-YMMV

I'm not in a position to judge, but maybe your expectations of their Windows knowledge was a little too high.

[kongsian]

OK, thanks. It seems they are struggling to do something that has already been done (namely make an adapter that at the front-end understands both XBoard and UCI protocol, and at the back-end converses with Fruit in UCI), and is not needed (because current XBoard spawns Polyglot itself when running UCI engines. If they really want to convert Fruit into an XBoard engine, they would save themselves a lot of trouble by contacting me anyway; I probably already have the code for that lying around...

Who is running this show? Is it Stuart and Kong Sian?

Nope, I'm not involved at all.

Kong Sian

[kongsian]

I did not like what they did with the v5 GnuChess. They clearly made a serious effort to morph it so that it would not work under Windows. There is no other possible explanation for their architecture choices.

Operating system hostility is as big a pile of foolishness as racism.

This statement really intrigues me. Could you explain what you mean in greater detail? I was under the impression it runs fine under Windows.

Kong Sian