ChessGUI and Chess960

[Evert]

I guess they took different choices to implement castling.

In which case they probably don't work correctly under Win/XBoard.

The thing is, there really isn't much of a "choice" when it comes to implementing a protocol. Either you follow it, or you don't.

Of course, you can always choose to implement extensions to the protocol. In fact, Sjaak has several of those: it has "board" and "moves" commands, and understands things like "variant pocketknight" or "variant maharaja". However, when talking to XBoard it still "speaks" XBoard protocol.

So here's a question from me: given that the XBoard protocol states O-O and O-O-O for castling moves, that's what I should implement. Now, suppose I add recognition of KxR as an alternative notation for castling moves so that I do the right thing when I receive KxR from a buggy GUI. Question: what should I do when I castle myself? Send KxR? That's against protocol specifications and will break on GUIs that follow the specs (like XBoard). Send O-O as I do now? That still won't work on a GUI that only understands KxR.

[hgm]

If Xboard borrows AHah from UCI because of castling, it should not forget to take the UCI castling rules also.

Oh, I missed this completely, until Tony quoted it.

Indeed, this is nonsense. For one, I did not 'borrow' anything from UCI, I just use an existing FEN standard. FENs are not tied to a protocol, and not even to computer Chess; they were designed to efficiently print Chess positions in newspapers.

Both the Shredder FEN and X-FEN use file letters for castling rights. X-FEN has nothing to do with UCI.

I can extend protocol, but I cannot arbitrarily change it in a non-backward-compatible way. When I fixed the FRC capabilities of WinBoard, the protocol specs already prescribed FRC castling to be transmitted as O-O, O-O-O. Nothing was mentioned in connection with FEN, though. Except in the proposal for v3 of the protocol, which prescribed HAha. So it seemed a good idea to follow that, also because it is technically easier. But as there already existed a GUI that used KQkq (Arena), and it seemed like back-stabbing to now change the protocol in such a way that would make it non-compliant. So I specified that both standards are allowable.

I am afraid that this state of affairs has been allowed to develop by WinBoard accidentally accepting KxR long-algebraic notation as input, because it is the internal encoding it uses for such moves. If this is the case I should make the parser more strict, to catch this non-compliance.

[Modern Times]

I guess they took different choices to implement castling.

In which case they probably don't work correctly under Win/XBoard.

I don't know, I never use those GUIs for FRC. I suspect not many people do. Some use Arena, but I don't really know what works there or not either.

ChessGUI has the best FRC support, and does not need to resort to adaptors. So that is what I use. I remember trying Sjaak and it didn't work, but that is the only FRC engine I've tried that didn't.

As for your own engine, do what you feel is right, it is entirely up to you.

[Alexander Schmidt]

GUI bugs.

I run 23 Winboard and 41 UCI FRC engines under ChessGUI without problems and I can ensure you it works well for what it is supposed to.

You have changed the FRC implementation in Winboard and you have good reasons for it, but it is not nice to call other GUIs buggy because they support an older standart that worked for years.

Now you have the choice to get together with Matthias and other GUI developers to create an unique standart of which all parties benefit (especially the engine developers) or to go on like this, anger others by dispaising their work and keep an unique feature for winboard...

[Richard Allbert]

Sjaak seems to use this new approach.


Matthias.

Name and shame in a public forum.

What a nice place this has become.

[hgm]

I run 23 Winboard and 41 UCI FRC engines under ChessGUI without problems and I can ensure you it works well for what it is supposed to.

You have changed the FRC implementation in Winboard and you have good reasons for it, but it is not nice to call other GUIs buggy because they support an older standart that worked for years.

Now you have the choice to get together with Matthias and other GUI developers to create an unique standart of which all parties benefit (especially the engine developers) or to go on like this, anger others by dispaising their work and keep an unique feature for winboard...

You seem completely mis-informed. This is not something I changed at all.

It was not me that called ChessGUI buggy, that was Evert. I was just talking about bugs in GUIs and engines in general. I just pointed out that ChessGUI is not compliant with the protocol specs we all recognize and have recognized for decades. Which is a matter of fact.

Why are you so eager to accuse me of things? When you would have read the discussion between Evert and Matthias with which this thread started, you would have seen that there is no question of an 'older standard'. There never has been another standard than the one we have now for FRC castling moves in WB protocol (and which ChessGUI does not follow). Read the protocol specs that came with WinBoard 4.2.7 (= 2002) if you don't believe me.

What has happened in fact here is that Mathias thinks I should have changed the old standard, and has started to use a new standard he thinks I should have changed it to on his own initiative, without informing anyone. No other GUI I know of uses this new 'standard'.

What I 'changed' was the FEN format castling field, which is not a matter of discussion here as currently ChessGUI and WinBoard do use the same FEN format. And I did not really change it, but just added it anew, as before me WinBoard was not even aware of castling rights, and there was no accepted standard for it in WB protocol. (Of course humans had standards for this, and I conformed to those.)

Would you bcare to rephrase your accusations based on this corrected info?

[Matthias Gemuh]

...

ChessGUI has the best FRC support, and does not need to resort to adaptors. So that is what I use. I remember trying Sjaak and it didn't work, but that is the only FRC engine I've tried that didn't.

...

There seems to be a total of 3 engines that use the new approach.
2 of them are Sjaak and TJchess, whose authors have posted in this thread.
Maybe TJchess goes the new way only for variants other than FRC.

The author of the 3rd engine may not be aware of the different approach.


Matthias.

[hgm]

There seems to be a total of 3 engines that use the new approach.
2 of them are Sjaak and TJchess, whose authors have posted in this thread.
Maybe TJchess goes the new way only for variants other than FRC.

The author of the 3rd engine may not be aware of the different approach.

Mathias, why are you insisting that this is a 'new' approach? You must know (or can check easily) that this so-called 'new' approach has in fact been standard WB protocol since 2002 (and probably long before, but my knowledge does not go back that far).

It is you who uses a new approach. And today is the first time I hear about it. Why quarrel about something so obvious and trivial? It can only distracts from the real issue, and delay its resolution.

[Matthias Gemuh]

There seems to be a total of 3 engines that use the new approach.
2 of them are Sjaak and TJchess, whose authors have posted in this thread.
Maybe TJchess goes the new way only for variants other than FRC.

The author of the 3rd engine may not be aware of the different approach.

Mathias, why are you insisting that this is a 'new' approach? You must know (or can check easily) that this so-called 'new' approach has in fact been standard WB protocol since 2002 (and probably long before, but my knowledge does not go back that far).

It is you who uses a new approach. And today is the first time I hear about it. Why quarrel about something so obvious and trivial? It can only distracts from the real issue, and delay its resolution.

If it is that old, then why is it supported by only 3 FRC engines (plus yours ?) ?

Note that all other FRC engines run fine under ChessGUI.

[Alexander Schmidt]

You seem completely mis-informed. This is not something I changed at all.

It was not me that called ChessGUI buggy,

You talked about a GUI bug, and I admit I didn't look for a the time the messages where postes, so I don't know who was first. But in the past you also mentioned the support of the wrong FRC protocol a bug.

There never has been another standard than the one we have now for FRC castling moves in WB protocol.

I know that there has never been a standard, and you know that FRC was handeled in a different way as now. We should stop the beancounting of what a standars is and what not. If you re read my post you will also see that I wrote you had good reasons to change the standard.

What I 'changed' was the FEN format castling field, which is not a matter of discussion here as currently ChessGUI and WinBoard do use the same FEN format.

Thats not called into question.

Would you bcare to rephrase your accusations based on this corrected info?

What accusations? I asked you to get together with Matthias to solve the problem. You are also someone who doesn't beat around the bush, so why don't you stop acting like a primadonna