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Subject: Re: DGT vs Novag Universal

Author: Rolf Gustafsson

Date: 09:05:53 01/20/99

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On January 20, 1999 at 08:01:31, Sylvain Renard wrote:

>On January 19, 1999 at 19:49:26, Michael Ginat wrote:
>
>>Also, has anyone tested DGT's claim that they have a driver which will support
>>all windows based programs? Would that include 32 bit versions?
>  The universal driver works this way: after you have moved a piece on the
>board, the driver makes the MOUSE move, so it can work with all the programs,
>but of course it is SLOW, if you compare it with Fritz' driver !

   Sorry to see that you think the universal driver is (too?) slow.

There are some things you can do, without changing the code, to make it
alittle faster.
One thing is that most programs accepts keyboard input, like e2e4, and
if so, that might be faster. The mouse moves can either be point and click
or drag and drop, and point and click seems to be faster.
Another thing is to play with the SLEEP value in the ini-files.
The program also checks for a stable position, that is two reads of the
board must be the same for the move to be accepted. I had this configurable
in a ini-file variable before and perhaps I should add it again.
The purpose of the double read is to make it less likely that you
get the wrong move if you slide your rook from a1 to e1 in a game.

The program isn't optimised, and I wrote it because I wanted to be able
to use more programs. It is better than nothing if you're fond of a specific
program.
You can use the driver together with Fritz and compare, but a driver
written for a specific program will, if the programmers do a good job,
be better then a generic driver.
I haven't done any scientific tests on speed, but I've tried to move pawns
out as quickly as I can, like a3,a6,b3 etc, in order to see where to moves
starts to get lost.

It would be interesting to know what hardware and software you used
when you tried the driver and found it slow.
If you've time and want to, you can send the info to me: rolfg@swipnet.se
The input may help to improve the driver in future releases.

 Regards,
  Rolf G.




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