Re: [XBoard-devel] Polyglot 2.0

[h.g. muller]

> That's exactly the problem as I see it.  Unless we intend to maintain that 
> fork, people will move to versions that are maintained.  If doing that 
> causes problems for some reason, then those who require polyglot will 
> simply not use 4.4.0.  I'm in that category for sure.

I don't think this is a problem. For one, the ptach is simple
and localized wel enough that I could apply it to any new
Polyglot version in a matter of minutes.

In the second place, the only problems that people would
have that want to switch to another Polyglot fork, is that they
lose part of the functionality of 4.4.0. If they switch to another
WinBoard version they would exactly lose that same functionality,
and three times more. So why would they do it?

It is important to realize that _all_ Polyglots that are currently
maintained are forks. The original author (Fabien Letouzy)
is no longer active in computer chess. Currently active forks
are those of Fonzy Bleumers and Michel van den Bergh.
So far thir versions did not make it into any of the Linux
repositories, but for Windows the original version has been
completely replaced (as it was dependent on cygwin1.dll,
a problem that was solved by Morning Yellow, whose version
served as a basis for the current forks).

If we would built native UCI support into WinBoard, (e.g. by
incorporating most of the Polyglot code into it) we would
have to maintain that code for sure, as no one else would
do it for us. It wil be far easier to apply a simple patch to any
new Polyglot that might surface because others are maintaining
it.