Re: Bug-gnubg Digest, Vol 237, Issue 2

[Guido Flohr]

Him

> On 14 Nov 2023, at 20:42, Frank Berger <frank@bgblitz.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> From: Guido Flohr <guido.flohr@cantanea.com>
>>> On 13 Nov 2023, at 21:22, Carsten Wenderdel <chrisforen@outlook.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>> In chess there is UCI, an interface understood by virtually all engines, 
>>> bots and GUIs. Wouldn’t it be great if we had something similar for 
>>> backgammon? Someone could write a new engine or GUI without worrying too 
>>> much about the other. If someone wanted to create a JavaScript or Flutter 
>>> GUI on top of GnuBG, it would be possible.
>> 
>> I have both implemented UCI and xboard and imho both ”protocols” are 
>> terrible. We should learn from their mistakes.
> 
> What suggestions do you have? I don’t know much about UCI other than it is 
> based on std input/output and text based.

The problem is that the specification is hard to understand and sometimes 
ambiguous. 

> 
> 
> 
>> 
>>> In chess UCI uses standard input and output. I believe a modern 
>>> interpretation should be based on web technologies.
>> 
>> Absolutely.
>> 
> I personally like input/output because it is dead simple and elegantly 
> addresses some issues with the probably most common scenario client and 
> AI-server on the same computer (several instances, no need to 
> communicate/negotiate ports) and avoids unnecessary complexity (if you have 
> http you should do error handling for http).

Obviously you’re not the only fan of raw I/O. Therefore, it’s probably a good 
idea to just stick to it, and rather offer a connector that translates the 
protocol to a web api for those that prefer it. That should make everybody 
happy and not very hard.
 
Cheers,
Guido