Glaurung GUI for Mac OS X (and possibly Linux)
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:56 am
By popular demand, I have now released a development version of my Mac OS X GUI for Glaurung (the one I used to operate Glaurung in the OPCCC last weekend, and in Mainz last summer). The GUI currently has the following main features:
If you try my GUI and find some bug, please don't even bother to report it yet. It is quite likely that I'm already aware of the bug. Right now I am mainly interested in the following types of feedback:
Tord
- UCI support. Glaurung 1.2.1 and Glaurung Lodz 2007 are pre-installed, but all other UCI engines for OS X should work. I have tested with Diablo, Eden, Fruit, Hiarcs and Shredder.
- Plays normal chess and Chess960 (with compatible engines).
- GUI book for engines which ship without a book of their own.
- Can read and write PGN games with comments and variations.
- Supports cut and paste of PGN games and FEN strings to and from the clipboard. This is quite neat: If you see a test position in FEN format posted on the CCC or elsewhere, just highlight the FEN, copy it (Command+C), switch to Glaurung, and paste it (Command+V). The position instantly appears on the board. There's a similar function for PGN games, but for some reason it sometimes causes the program to crash for PGNs made by the most recent versions of the ChessBase programs.
- Engine vs engine games. This isn't completely stable yet, but it works OK for short matches (10-20 games).
If you try my GUI and find some bug, please don't even bother to report it yet. It is quite likely that I'm already aware of the bug. Right now I am mainly interested in the following types of feedback:
- Glaurung needs a nice icon! I lack the artistical skills to make one myself. If someone could contribute a pretty icon for Glaurung, I would b very pleased.
- Would anyone be interested in trying to port the GUI to Linux? I think it should be only moderatly difficult to use GNUStep to port the program to Linux, but I have no time to do the work myself.
- Does the GUI work on PowerPC Macs? I've tried to compile a universal binary, but without a PowerPC Mac available for testing I can't verify that it works. Please note that the Glaurung Lodz 2007 engine does certainly not work on PowerPC Macs, you'll have to use Glaurung 1.2.1 (the default engine).
- Does the Glaurung Lodz 2007 engine work on 64-bit Intel Macs (i.e. Core 2 Duos)? If yes, is it noticably faster than Glaurung 2 - ε/5?
Tord