WilSoft wrote: Hi!
> 3.6.23 now supports the DGT-board :) Well, sure ;) Not only DGT though, its a more general interface, actually. > Well I think it does... It does. Its not just the buttons I can asure you. ;) > Under 'Connect hardware' a engine driver dgtdrv2.i686 is > given (Commmand is written with 3 m's in the menu..). Thanks for the typo. I'll correct that. Still all this has to be redone for NLS. > Has anybody tested it? Yepp. Well, I test it when I work on it ;) Its not perfectly polished yet as the Correspondence Chess part took more time than I expected (well this part right now offers much more functionality than I first intended ;) but it will get polished as soon as I've the time. For the status: I want to finish the CC stuff first, and I'd not delay 3.6.23 for Input Engine. But it's on my definite list for 3.6.24 the latest. This does not mean that whats there already is unusable, but Scids support for Input Eninges definitely needs testing. What can it do? I'm currently able to set up position on my DGT and Scid reads it in, you can enter moves, for one side, for both sides, they are announced visually as well as spoken, moves are added to the move list and you can store them etc. What I did not test yet is, how well it works together with FICS and the game play functions from Pascal. (I'm a bit on the move right now and the DGT is, hm well, not as small as my notebook ;) And a minor point: I've no DGT XL clock so I never tested the clock code in dgtdrv2 in the wild at all. Though handling the external hardware clock is implemented. Additionally, there are some points I'd like to discuss on the actual "User Interface". That is e.g.: - How should it behave e.g. if Scid has loaded a game and you set up a position? - If you've loaded a game with variations and set up a position which is reached more than once in this game, how to determine where to jump to? - How should variations input be handled? Ie. how to add a variation, go over variations, go back to the mainline... - How to move backwards in a game or jump to another point? - How to save the current game? - What is expected to do anyway? E.g. setting up a position and entering moves is done for quite some time now, it should also hande _all_ moves ie. EP, promotions, O-O(-O) and so one is done. Hence, it could replace keyboard/mouse entry. But maybe there's still more we can get out of it. Ideas welcome. Most of this is concerned with "special moves". E.g. right now I'd say it should works like the Novag Citrine plus the ability to read in positions set up on the board. I also implemented the "end game", "move now", "enter setup"/"leave setup" commands. Note, however, that the actual hardware dependendt part is NOT done in Scid but in the input engine (for the DGT this could be e.g. dgtdrv2). That is, if you implement whatever other hardware device as input engine you could just hook it up as the driver for Scid. Consider Scids support beta, the driver, well it is stable for me but it lacks the testing "in the wild", and I've only a serial board which I use together with a serial->USB converter, meaning I never tested e.g. Bluetooth. Plus, one drawback Pascal always mentiones: it needs dgtdrv2 + dgtnix, which talk to scid via stdio, and according to Pascal this is not a good idea on CE where he'd prefer a TCL based driver. This, however, is not that trivial, dgtnix contains some "minutes" of work, I can tell, and dgtnix goes way beyond dgtdrv in crafty which was actually the basis of my first Input Engine. (Even to port that will require some work.) > The driver can be found here... > http://dgtdrv.sourceforge.net/ Yepp :) Note that you need also dgtnix from dgtnix.sf.net. Additionally, please note that Scids interface is _NOT_ limited to the DGT! The protocol I use is published on dgtdrv's website and actually you could hook up everything there, following this protocol, and it would right away work with Scid. One could imagine e.g. some TCP/IP based server that feeds to scid, or whatever or if you wnat to have another PGN import you could write some lines of <place your favourite scripting language here> to read the PGNs moves to Scid via that interface. Additionally, this protocoll is _very_ close to xboard and uci, it is actually trivial to add to any other GUI. Plus you could use dgtdrv2 in any GUI that allows for an engine tournament. xboard e.g. As a side note: the dgtdrv package also contains a patch against xboard to get a smoother integration there ie. reading in positions... -- Kind regards, / War is Peace. | Freedom is Slavery. Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength. | | Theory : G. 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