Install native Linux engines in Arena running under Wine.

[hgm]

Because I don't need to. It is obvious and simple to do in Arena. Even you could do it. (Hint.... Engines->Manage)

Doesn't sound simpler than Engines -> Load Engine, so far. (Hint... try harder!)

When was the last time you used XBoard anyway? (Just as a check if you actually know what you are talking about...)

The last time was when there was a solar eclipse in the UK.....

A total eclipse, one would presume? Would that by any chance be at the time Stonehenge was constructed? Of course I knew that you could not afford a straightforward answer, as that would make you look utterly ridiculous.

Says the man (in a thread about Arena yet again) talking about what is so much better (in his world maybe) rather than answering the original question about the subject of the thread.

You do it all the time. Are there any mirrors in your house? If so take a good long look.

Whiny whiny... Not such a good idea to invite a real comparison after all? Well, thats what you get when you are trying to spread fabrications. Blame yourself. I merely remarked that one shouldn't use SCID as alternative for the non-existing (oh, sorry, 'non-PUBLIC') Linux-Arena without at least considering XBoard as an alternative. You could very well have left it at that, but you chose not to.

BTW I like the pictures. They prove the point soooo very well about lack of usability and cluttered state.

Never own a firearm, you'd end up shooting yourself in the foot.

I like to provide fact. I am afraid awfully few people will be interested in your opinion about the facts, when they can see for themselves. But nice try, keep working at it...

On the other hand, images from this so called non-PUBLIC Arena port remain conspicuously absent. While this would have been such a nice opportunity to show the overwhelming superiority of the Arena dialogs over the XBoard dialogs. It will make the readers here think... But then again, the readers should of course realize they are not 'relevant' to the Arena team!

Your 'shooting in the foot' remark is actually extremely revealing about the attitude of the Arena team. You see, I don't care what people think about the pictures. I spread them as facts, so people can decide for themselves if they like them or think they are awful. My only interest is to help them make in informed decision. And I inform people by providing facts about XBoard, not by blabbering fabrications about Arena.

Your remark, however, suggests that you consider it recommended procedure to _hide_ facts that might not be received well. Which of course does go a long way in explaining why you are always so evasive when it comes to providing real evidence, and rely solely on rather pathetics attempts to verbally drag XBoard down...

[Christopher Conkie]

How do you install multiple engines at the same time in Winboard?

Yours in anticipation of an answer to yet another unanswered question.

Chris

[hgm]

Oh right, your fascination with installing 1000 engines through a single mouse click. The cork on which the Arena self-worth apparently floats.

Well, first let me ask you this, then:

1) how many engines have you installed today?
2) what was the last time you installed multiple engines at the same time?

The answer for WinBoard is currently: you don't. And considering the typical answer to the two questions above, you can guess that I feel no great urgency to change that. I just don't think it is a feature of much practical use.

In fact, what I have in mind for the installing of engines is a bit more encompassing. (And mind you, I am talking about really installing engines, not about what passes for installing in Arena, which more acurately would be described as configuring Arena for using engines that the user already had installed.) And I would not implement it in WinBoard itself, but as a separate tool. Because it could be generally useful, also in combination with other GUIs. You see, unike you guys, I am only interested in improving life for the computer Chess community, not in promoting a single GUI by foulmouthing alternatives. So I would not mind if, say, Arena or SCID users could also benefit from my install tool. No petty protectionism from my side...

Of course it doesn't exist yet, but since the PUBLIC Linux port of Arena doesn't either, I guess it is fair game to talk about it here. The tool would make installing multiple engines rather simple. It would present the engines available according to the chosen maintainer in a multi-columnar display (e.g. name, version, author, date, country, protocol, rating, supported variants...), which could be sorted by any of the columns. Selecting one or a group of them with the mouse in the regular way, and clicking 'download', would then install them ready to be used. E.g. when I would want to update my engine collection with all releases of last week, I would simply click on the date header to sort by date, and then select the upper block of those for downoad.

To me that seems the most convenient method for installing engines.

[Michael Diosi]

Hi,

Why should I eat Margarine when I have Butter ?

Michael
http://www.playwitharena.com

[hgm]

Hi,

Why should I eat Margarine when I have Butter ?

Michael
http://www.playwitharena.com

To stay healthy? (Ever heard of saturated fatty acids?)

But if this was intended as an attempt to rephrase the question of the initial poster, it is a bust. You should have asked:

"Why should I eat Margarine when it is readily available, and the butter is NOT-PUBLIC?"!

[Christopher Conkie]

The main advantage of Arena is its usability. Winboard is not an intuitive interface. It is recently only about what HG Mueller wants, not about what users want. You only have to look at the "features" you have implemented. How many people asked for Shantraj? Was it a veritable flood? Go away HG and implement Monopoly in it for us...

Chris

[bob]

How many of the readers here do have a Citrine board, or similar mystics? (Don't be shy to report it! After all, it might suddenly make you 'relevant' to the Arena team...)

More than those who want to play "Shatranj" in here.

Are you now trying to create the impression that Arena is primarily targeting the niche market of auto-response board owners, and has little to praise about it for application as a general purpose GUI for Chess?

Arena is targeted at those who want to play chess be it in an interface or using a real board.

I have no need to 'sell' XBoard by the argument that it can also do Atomic, Gothic, Chinese and Japanese Chess. It can and they are nice add-ons, (and Arene...), but will hardly impress the average reader here.

No one would pay for it. It is probably a good idea that you don't sell it.

Chris

For the record, there's nothing wrong with supporting other dialects of chess. Xboard development has increased significantly since HGM took over, and that is always a good thing, since it had been very stagnant since Tim moved to a new job years ago...

I've been using it exclusively since late 1994, and it has done everything I needed, except on my cluster, where I can't deal with GUI displays as playing 256 games at a time generates way too much network traffic for remote-x...

[hgm]

Well, your intuition is apparently a bit different that that of others. Nothing wrong with that; intuition is related to taste. I have always thought WinBoard worked pretty naturally, and think the user interface of Arena is quite awkward to learn. (That is not the reason why I don't use Arena, of course, for one can learn anything. Its just that it doesn't do what I need done.) The only complaints about how poor the user interface of WinBoard is come from people like you that never use it, and haven't the slightest idea how it works.

For the rest what you say is the usually babble. There are many things I implemented in WinBoard that are of no use to me, because people requested them. E.g.

*) Variation-tree walking
*) Multi-PV support
*) On-the-fly engine loading
*) Book support, including book editing
*) Keep-alive of the ICS connection
*) ICS seek graph
*) Dual board for bughouse partner game
*) Internationalization

I even have made numerous enhancements of XBoard, while I _never_ use XBoard.

You still don't seem to know any other way to 'promote' Arena than spreading falsehoods about me and WinBoard. Don't you see a pattern there?

[Christopher Conkie]

The only pattern I see is one of you appearing in threads about Arena banging on about Winboard. Not to worry although as the next Winboard thread we see we will crap all over from a great height. Get ready...you will really enjoy getting dragged through a hedge backwards.

You deserve it. Meanwhile get Monopoly implemented. Its more popular than the rubbish you have.

[bob]

Fact:
WinBoard has a native Linux port, called XBoard, and the two are now nearly equivalent in capabilities and features.

And have the same lack of usability for the average user.....

I don't get that comment at all. I know several chess players, non-computer-scientists, that use xboard or winboard (depending on their O/S of choice) to play online chess, or play against a computer, or practice before going to a live tournament. I started using xboard in 1994 when I wrote the initial version of Crafty. It took me all of 15 minutes to download the thing (modem at the time) and get connected to (at the time) ICS (before they went commercial and became ICC).

what, exactly, is supposedly so hard to do in xboard? I have used it for engine-vs-engine testing/debugging, to play crafty, to run Crafty in online events, to play on ICC myself as a human, to observe games in progress, to examing games on ICC and even let Crafty give me scores and such as I step through the games... I don't get this "xboard is too difficult to use."

Fact:
Arena at the moment does not have a native Linux port. Will it arrive in any reasonable time, or are the promises for this by the Arena team as fabricated as their statements about XBoard? Who knows?

You don't, that's for sure.

How can it be a fabrication to say that configuring an engine for use in Winboard or Xboard is a bind? It just is and there are no two ways about it.

I don't get that either. Earlier versions required "-fcp engine-of-your-choice" and "-fd directory-to-run-engine-in" Not exactly rocket science...

The interface badly needs a makeover and functionality to allow users to be able to get started as quickly as possible with the minimum of fuss.

The Arena site is called playwitharena because you just can.

The Winboard site should be called getfrustratedwithwinboard because that is what most users find it to be.

You say you want feedback. I've given you feedback. The interface in Winboard/Xboard is unwieldy, badly thought out, unhelpful, lacks any automation, bland and not user friendly at all.

Chris