Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: UCI (=universal chess interface)

Author: Vladimir Sokolov

Date: 01:05:43 11/29/00

Go up one level in this thread


On November 29, 2000 at 02:45:34, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen wrote:

>On November 28, 2000 at 15:34:51, Edward Screven wrote:
>
>>i think your protocol has a lot to recommend it.  in particular i
>>like having search separated from play, having clock information
>>made available as part of the "go" command, and having engine
>>specific options exposed through the GUI.  but i have one question
>>and one objection.
>>
>>question: why is "position" a separate command, and not an argument
>>to "go".  as far as i can tell, there's nothing an engine is
>>supposed to do with a position other than search it, and the
>>engine isn't supposed to search until it receives a "go".  so
>>why not take the stateless nature of the protocol further and
>>make the position information part of "go"?
>
>Yes, this was one point we also thought about as there will always be a
>"position" command before a "go" command. We decided to keep it seperated as
>both commands can be quite long.
>
>>objection: i strongly dislike the way pondering is supposed to work.
>>i don't mind having a command that says "start pondering now", but
>>the assumptions built into the protocol - that it is always a search
>>based on an opponent move guess computed as a side affect of a
>>previous search - are too limiting.  what about the first move out
>>of book?  what if no guess move is immediately available because
>>the previous search ended in a fail-high?  in these cases my engine
>>does a short search to guess at the opponent move, but it doesn't do
>>that until it is time to start pondering.  i don't see how to
>>fit this into the uci protocol.
>
>You are right, but the engine can take the last move sent in a "go ponder"
>command as a suggestion on what to do. It can ponder or do anything it likes, it
>only has to execute that particular move after the "ponderhit" command.
>
>This is eqivalent to what we are doing if you take the move as a suggestion. see
>above.
>
>Thanks for your comments.
>
>  Stefan



If UCI is really an equivalent to Winboard it is freely downloadable,
or is it more exactly a protocol that functions like an adapter between engine
and GUI ?  Different Gui's, that can be modified by the user, can be built to
function with the protocol, but the Gui of Shredder 5 is not downloadable,
consequently the graphical user interface of Shredder 5 is not freely available.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.