Re: gnuchess/xboard protocol

[Ethan A Burns]

sorry to spam but I forgot the sourceforge url:
        https://sourceforge.net/projects/glutboard

>If anyone was curious, I have finally made a sourceforge page for my project.
>I am now going to take a small break from it, however, it is playable with
>gnuchess.  It does castling, capturing, and basic moves but not pawn promotion
>,
>or en passant.
>
>--Ethan
>
>>Ethan A Burns wrote:
>>> 
>>> http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard/engine-intf.html
>>>
>>> Looking at this page and comparing with output from ``gnuchess --xboard''
>>> doesn't match up.
>>> 
>>> Does anyone have input for this?  Is this document out dated now?
>>
>>The document is current.
>>
>>Deviations are bugs, or in some cases just missing features.
>>
>>> Chess
>>> Adjusting HashSize to 1024 slots
>>> ...
>>
>>> Testing around a bit, sending and reading (reading in a seperate thread), I
> 
>>> found that gnuchess only seems to send output to my pipe AFTER receiving a 
>>> move from my program.
>>
>>It is easier to look at the source for this, as you'll see where output
>>is done to the stdout, in xboard mode, the pipe is explicitly flushed
>>(the code should have been refactored to stuff this into a subroutine).
>>
>>It isn't flushed for the hash output, so I think this is a clear bug
>>(Indeed I'll have to check if it should be output at all).
>>
>>I think the reason it doesn't cause any issues for most of the programs
>>that work with it because of how they do the communication. Most do a
>>"ping", and check for "pong", and so eat all this dross in the output
>>that shouldn't be there at start-up.
>>
>>I will tidy this up for the next release, but suggest the "ping"/"pong"
>>check is probably worth doing in general and as a workaround if you have
>>to cope with earlier GNU Chess versions.
>>
>>Can I ask what your program does?