Elements of the ULTIMATE Chess GUI?

[Ras]

It seems you are criticizing engines here, not the UI.

I'm astonished to learn that you have started agreeing with Postel's principle and the erosion of standards it causes.

But the problem with that is that the filenames in Windows can contain spaces

The obvious solution: quotation marks.

Which is extremely user-fiendish.

It isn't. Just automatically add the quotes when selecting the exe via the file selector box. Or already start it with a quotation mark and only add in the closing one from the file select, something like this.

Setting up positions from the 'pallette position' and using copy/move works very fast for me.

It works for you because you know how. Another key factor of GUI design is discoveribility, and Winboard completely fails here.

So how does the reverred Shredder GUI deal with WB v1 engines?

WB2UCI, and possible failings of that adaptor are completely irrelevant as I'm not talking about FEATURES. Yes, there are engines from crappy times that "need" this ugly INI file hell. This whole mess was one of the main reasons for UCI, after all.

Having to open dialog after dialog would be extremely annoying to me.

You don't open dialogue after dialogue. Once e.g. the WB/UCI dialogue closes, the one with the select box opens automatically.

If guidance is required for a first-time user, just printing fat numbers (1), (2), (3)... in front of the input controls he has to operate

*LOL* This is UI design with a big hammer applied in the user's face.

You mean that you cannot specify which engines should use book, and which should not? That there is just a single GUI setting that makes either all engines use book, or none at all?

Maybe it's different in tournament mode, but for the most basic usage of analysis and interactive play, there's only one engine at a time. I've not yet tested tournament mode because people do that with Arena, so that's my test environment.

There are plenty of engines that play only Crazyhouse, though. Or Shogi.

Or Go, maybe. Or Poker. Who cares? It's about CHESS GUIs, see the title of this thread. If Winboard isn't about chess anymore, that's OK, but then Winboard is offtopic at least in this thread.

The whole point is that you can give the naturally stronger egines more time odds than the weaker ones.

Just another feature that I'm fine with as long as I can ignore it and it doesn't get in my way. Again, it is not about the amount of features. I'm under the impression that you simply have no clue at all what my criticism of lousy UI design is about. Which of course explains said design.

This sounds completely detached from reality.

Certainly completely detached from any reality where you'd regard Winboard as a good example of UI design. Taking a UI that was already bad under Linux and then expecting Windows users not to be put off seems really strange to me.

And the menus are organized in a task-oriented way.

The menus. *sigh*

You recount of history is also off the mark. It is true that WinBoard is an XBoard port, but XBoard at that time had none of the menu dialogs.

Anyway, Xboard already sucked under Linux.

Chaging how dialogs look, or moving controls from one dialog to another is often just a matter of minutes. Adding new dialogs and menu items to pop them up perhaps only a matter of 15 minutes.

It shouldn't be difficult at all to make the menu interface look anyway you want it to look. It seems more a matter of taste; what one person thinks is great, makes the other puke.

It isn't about how something looks. It's about usability issues. There is a reason why you don't see any, and it isn't their absence. It's pretty pointless to take that discussion further.

My conclusion: asking for a great GUI in a programmer forum where no designers and usability experts are present will only lead to a total UI desaster, but at least one that runs under Linux.

[hgm]

I'm astonished to learn that you have started agreeing with Postel's principle and the erosion of standards it causes.

That is unwarranted. We are talking about an older standard here. There are many engines that are no longer maintained that were written according to that standard.

It isn't. Just automatically add the quotes when selecting the exe via the file selector box. Or already start it with a quotation mark and only add in the closing one from the file select, something like this.

So what if they don't use the file-selector box and type the name?

It works for you because you know how. Another key factor of GUI design is discoveribility, and Winboard completely fails here.

Well, I admit that position setup has always been my greatest worry in WinBoard. But I am not prepared to make it infinitely cumbersome just to make it discoverable. Now that I am finally happy with a method through which it can be done, it is time to start worrying how to improve the discoverability of this method.

WB2UCI, and possible failings of that adaptor are completely irrelevant as I'm not talking about FEATURES. Yes, there are engines from crappy times that "need" this ugly INI file hell. This whole mess was one of the main reasons for UCI, after all.

As I understand it, this "INI hell" is the only method for running WB engines in Shredder GUI. If the GUI just delegates the entire task to an entity external to it, no wonder it can look very simple. The Load Engine dialog in WinBoard that strike you with so much horror did not exist at all originally. You could just use NotePad to edit an ini file. By your logic this would be the perfect UI, no distracting controls.

You don't open dialogue after dialogue. Once e.g. the WB/UCI dialogue closes, the one with the select box opens automatically.

Well, you have to do something to make it close, right?

*LOL* This is UI design with a big hammer applied in the user's face.

Well, as an expert user I would still prefer it VERY MUCH over what you describe of Shredder...

Maybe it's different in tournament mode, but for the most basic usage of analysis and interactive play, there's only one engine at a time. I've not yet tested tournament mode because people do that with Arena, so that's my test environment.

Well, so we can take this as another "can't do" for Shredder? It can be simple and intuitive because you actually have to use Arena instead?

Or Go, maybe. Or Poker. Who cares? It's about CHESS GUIs, see the title of this thread. If Winboard isn't about chess anymore, that's OK, but then Winboard is offtopic at least in this thread.

Japanese Chess and Chinese Chess are just as much Chess as the Mad Queen variant you seem to be hooked on. They need exactly the same from a GUI. And WinBoard would never be off-topic, because it also does Mad Queen, even if it is not the only thing it can do.

That you try to make a big issue of the existence of 3 of the hundreds of dialog controls / menu items (the "New Variant" menu item, and the "Force current variant with this engine" and "USI/UCCI" checkboxes) that are related to variant support totally undermines your credibility...

The whole point is that you can give the naturally stronger egines more time odds than the weaker ones.

Just another feature that I'm fine with as long as I can ignore it and it doesn't get in my way. Again, it is not about the amount of features. I'm under the impression that you simply have no clue at all what my criticism of lousy UI design is about. Which of course explains said design.

No, the problem is that "doesn't get in my way" thing, or your concept of "being able to ignore it". You seem to equate those to "as long as they are not there". Because it is easy enough to "ignore it" where it is now in the usual meaning of the word, yet you make a big fuss about it. I understand your criticism very well, but you just pick the wrong examples. Time odds is only one of the possible "Special WinBoard options". I have not added checkboxes or numeric entries for every conceivable WinBoard setting you might need to make a newly registered engine work as you intend, for the very reason that these are needed only rarely, and their presence would just confuse noob users. Less is always better, in my philosophy. But I must provide some way to allow expert users to activate those features. It is easy to claim you are not against features, but what good are features that can never be exercised??? So I managed to reduce the entire list of weird features that expert users might want to invoke to just a single "Special WinBoard options" text entry.

I can add that many of the controls were actually added on user request from non-programmer users.

Certainly completely detached from any reality where you'd regard Winboard as a good example of UI design. Taking a UI that was already bad under Linux and then expecting Windows users not to be put off seems really strange to me.

That is what I meant by "totally detached from reality". Nothing of the kind ever happened, except in your fantasies. The UI of WinBoard is completely separate from that of XBoard, and always has been. It is just the "business logic" for handling games and communicating with engines that they have in common.

The menus. *sigh*

Well, that is what we are talking about here, right? Or are you claiming now that this is about command-line options?

It isn't about how something looks. It's about usability issues. There is a reason why you don't see any, and it isn't their absence. It's pretty pointless to take that discussion further.

It must be about how things look, because in the end that is all the program does: show you something to look at on the screen. So it is all about which controls should be present, how they should be distributed over dialogs, and when those dialogs should be shown. There just is nothing else.

[Fulvio]

It shouldn't be difficult at all to make the menu interface look anyway you want it to look. It seems more a matter of taste; what one person thinks is great, makes the other puke.

Some things are not a matter of taste, they are just wrong.
For example he is right about the engine's parameter field: many engines do not need it and should not be showed by default (but it should be possible to set the parameters with an "advanced configuration" or with a "+/-" icon that show/hide the most uncommon options).

[hgm]

I never said it was about taste; I can puke just as well over usability.

Hiding things when there is plenty of space doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose. And it would require me to open them with a separate mouse click when I would actually need them. It should be enough to put them in a group box "advanced configuration", so that people not feeling very advanced would ignore them. This is actually what I proposed above (except using "optional / exceptional" instead of "advanced"). Users that would be foolhardy enough to mess with things in a an "advanced" group box would also press the button needed to open an "advanced" dialog.

Note that there is nothing to gain by hiding stuff in the mentioned dialog; it just would show a lot of ugly empty space. The height of the dialog is dictated by the list box for engine selection on the left anyway.

[Fulvio]

It should be enough to put them in a group box "advanced configuration", so that people not feeling very advanced would ignore them.

You can do it the way you think it's better; but the program should "ask" only the necessary information and let the user "ask" for uncommon options.
The reason is that this is how natural human interactions works; for example when you order at a restaurant the waiter do not ask your preferences about every possible variation, but you can ask him if you want to.

[hgm]

Well, restaurants usually show vegetarian dishes on the same menu card as meat dishes, even though most people do eat meat. If I were a vegetarian I would be pretty annoyed if I had to ask for a separate card after having found out the one I initially got contained nothing for me. And if they have special non-allergenic preparations of the dish, it is often also mentioned.

So it is certainly not unheard of to offer choices that only a minority of the customers would make.

[Sergio Martinez]

I see too many posts and may repeat "desires" of other people, so I will try to be brief and apologize if I repeat some (I have read a few posts but not all):

-All Arena options (it's no secret that I'm a "fan" of this GUI)

-I've seen that people asked to implement Swiss tournament, round robin, and I think K.O. also, I have not seen that anyone ask about implement team tournaments, it would be very useful in my opinion.

-Option to order lists of engines by country, author, etc. and print them.

-Implement some tool like similarity tool, that way maybe we can get results of winboard engines that do not work under "simtool".

-Option to generate rating by engine and automatic modification engine, even add different tittles depend on results (gm, im).

-To distribute the engines by groups (for example if I organize tournaments of round robin to be able to attribute a group or division to a engine, of this way it would be easy after beginning a tournament with that group of engines).

Thank you very much.

[Fulvio]

So it is certainly not unheard of to offer choices that only a minority of the customers would make.

I would like to order a pizza (I would like to install a chess engine)
-Do you want to name it? (Nickname?)
-Which toppings do you want? (where is the the executable?)
-Do you want to add other ingredients? (parameters)
-Do you want the normal dough? (working directory)
-Do you want the small, medium or large size? (Winboard v1, v2, UCI)
-Do you want specific options for the small size, even if you ordered the large one? (Special Winboard options)
....
-Do you really want to order the pizza? (Ok/Cancel)

[Kirk]

One that can teach in natural language. Always like that aspect of CHESSMASTER for beginners. But since that program is dead an updated similar version of that with current top engines would be a nice way to review games.

[hgm]

I would like to order a pizza (I would like to install a chess engine)
-Do you want to name it? (Nickname?)
-Which toppings do you want? (where is the the executable?)
-Do you want to add other ingredients? (parameters)
-Do you want the normal dough? (working directory)
-Do you want the small, medium or large size? (Winboard v1, v2, UCI)
-Do you want specific options for the small size, even if you ordered the large one? (Special Winboard options)
....
-Do you really want to order the pizza? (Ok/Cancel)

Well, that is pretty much how it goes, right? Ever been at the MacDonalds? They invariably ask you if you want small/medium/large when you order a drink. They invariably ask you if you want something to drink if you order a burger. If you order a Coke they want to know if you want ice in it. That is, if they forget to ask you if it should be Diet Coke first. Furthermore, there still seems a subtle difference between asking all these questions verbally, or printing in the menu that you can order small/medium/large and with wheat or rye dough. If the computer was voice-operated, I would certainly be more selective.

If I order a Turkish Pizza ('Lamacun') they invariably ask me if I want 'everything on it' (i.e. including the raw onions, which many people dislike). And then they ask me if I want garlic sauce over it. And then if I also want spicy pepper sauce ('sambal') over it. And then whether I want it 'to go' or 'to eat here'. And then if I want to pay cash or card... In fact it is not very clear to me how you imagine they could give me what I want in any other way.

BTW, from your comparison it seems you misunderstand the purpose of "Special WinBoard options":

-Do you want specific options for the small size, even if you ordered the large one? (Special Winboard options)

(My fault, of course, I understand that.) These are NOT options for CECP engines, they are options for the WinBoard GUI, which you would want to be invoked automatically whenever that particular engine is loaded. Whether it is a UCI or a WB v1/v2 engine doesn't make the slightest difference. UCI engines can also be installed with (the already mentioned) time odds, a particular GUI book tailored to them, etc., whatever special treatment you want the GUI to give them.

So a more fitting (and less ridiculous) comparison would be:

-Do you want want to eat that with silverware, chopsticks or a chainsaw? (Special Winboard options)

For the 'final question' I think "Do you want to pay cash or card" would be more appropriate. And I surely hope you don't want to imply that OK/cancel buttons are a useless bloat of dialogs like this...