Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 18:54:13 12/09/03
Go up one level in this thread
On December 09, 2003 at 14:54:42, Omid David Tabibi wrote: >On December 09, 2003 at 14:43:18, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: > >>On December 09, 2003 at 14:41:39, Matthew Hull wrote: >> >> >>>If the GUI can play half the game (opening moves), then it is part of the >>>chess-playing software. The engine/GUI are one chess-playing entitiy. >>>Therefore, you point is egregiously in error. >> >>Who says the GUI must play the opening moves?! > >Nobody says that the GUI "must" do one thing or another. It is the seperation of >tasks. For example, you can let the interface play the opening moves, and do the >draw claim; let it only do the draw claim; do nothing; etc. There is no strict >border between the engine and the interface (read the WinBoard and UCI >protocols). I don't see how you can make the seperation... > > > >>Deep Sjeng plays the opening >>by itself (when running under ChessBase GUI). >> >>Therefore, you point is egregiously in error. >> >>-- >>GCP It must be clear to all that software must exist somewhere in the chess-playing machine which makes decisions of a higher-level nature. Conventional engines may be good at making choices during a search or position evaluation process. Higher-level decisions, such as deciding whether or not to claim a draw or deciding whether to use tablebase inputs, must be made by some sort of "executive" or higher-level software. The coding which does actual "searching" and "position evaluation" could be under the direct control, but subservient to, the higher level code. Search and position evaluation could be in a subprogram. [Alternatively, the "higher-level" code might be distributed and put helter-skelter into the engine code in the most hard-to-find way possible!] One may still wonder, however, whether or not it is better to put that "higher-level" software in the engine or into a GUI. Personally, I am attracted most to the idea of limiting GUI functions to certain well-defined and universally accepted tasks and putting all the rest into the engine. An example would be the issue of whether or not to use the engine's search/evaluation computations versus using a tablebase input. My guess is that such decisions could be performed by "executive" or "higher level" code in the "engine." One might debate what MUST be in a standard GUI, as an absolute minimum. The use of universally available simple GUIs should be allowed in computer tournaments, IMHO. This would free the engine programmers from "GUI drudgery." It seems desireable to encourage "engine" programmers to create "executive" portions of code in their engines, but not desireable to force them to re-invent the wheel on those things that a "good" GUI could or should do. [What would be the characteristics of a "good GUI"?] Wait until people start using multiple engines in their chess-playing machines! When or if that ever happens, programming the "executive" may become challenging. Bob D.
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