Re: [Bug-gnubg] Invert direction - bug / feature request + gnubg IDs

[Wayne Joseph]

Thank you for the historical background Michael. I do vaguely remember the
two separate boxes some years ago.

It's by no means a showstopper, but at least you, me and the other person
from the archive link you posted seem to agree that the single line format
is better. And use of the two line format is not clear for people new to
gnubg.

I understand single line format is currently not compatible with the
MindGamesCenter's tool (and possibly others). But I also think that they
(MindGamesCenter) should be able to fairly easily add code to also enable
parsing of the newer single line gnubg ID with some brief liaison between
the respective parties in the know. My intuition tells me that this would
not be extremely difficult as they already have existing code to interpret
the GNUBG ID in two line format (plus XG format).

By the way does anybody have any feedback about my earlier suggestion for a
toggle button to invert the direction / position? Is it possible to add this
functionality?
WJ >> Is there a way to quickly and easily invert the direction and pip
numbers so that I would be bearing off to the bottom right, instead of the
top right?


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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 11:58:13 -0700
From: Michael Petch <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Bug-gnubg] Invert direction - bug / feature request +
        gnubg IDs
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252



On 2014-12-19 11:33 AM, Wayne Joseph wrote:
> I could be misunderstanding, but this single line would seem to me to 
> be easier to copy and paste. I don't really see the value of 
> separating them onto two lines, especially as you explained that 
> generally the position ID is not very useful on its own (and I guess 
> pasting the match position in on its own is not that useful either).

I'll offer some insight on this. GNUbg has been around for a lot of years
(late 90s)and parts of it have evolved and in some cases GNUbg legacies
prompt this kind of discussion.

In the old days (up to about the mid 2000's) the MatchID and PositionID were
separated. If you were to download an old version of GNUbg from that era you
had to enter the matchid and positionid separately on the GUI.

Eventually some people viewed the two line display as cumbersome. GNUbg
itself can parse multiline and single line (matchid:positionid). The problem
is that some other software may only accept one or the other.
Coincidentally this past month this issue came up again in this thread when
using control-C to copy a position to the clipboard.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnubg/2014-11/msg00000.html

Some people like it one way, some the other. Beyond our software others use
these ids in their tools. Today I discovered that going to a one line
combined ID (aka a GNUBGID) actually prevents mindcentergames.com board
generator from working properly. It prefers the multiline Matchid/Positionid
to be entered and will not accept it on one line (effectively making
1.04.001 copy GNUBGID incompatible)

So try this. Go to http://www.mindgamescenter.com/#!bgdiagram:

and enter an example:

GNU Backgammon  Position ID: DCBwdwcE8IE9Qw
                 Match ID   : cAngAAAAAAAA

It should create the board diagram. Now try to enter the one line variant:

DCBwdwcE8IE9Qw:cAngAAAAAAAA

It will present an error "Incorrect XGID or GNUBg ID. Please use the
instructions above."

However if you remove the colon and put both parts of the id on separate
lines it will work:

DCBwdwcE8IE9Qw
cAngAAAAAAAA

In an ideal world all utilities should probably support both formats to stay
compatible with older and newer versions of GNUbg. The mindgamecenter issue
illustrates what happens when we make changes to the IDs. We may
inadvertently be breaking existing tools that may expect things in a more
specific format.

I personally prefer the combined form:

GNUBGID DCBwdwcE8IE9Qw:cAngAAAAAAAA


--
Michael Petch
GNU Backgammon Maintainer / Developer
OpenPGP FingerPrint=D81C 6A0D 987E 7DA5 3219 6715 466A 2ACE 5CAE 3304



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