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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [gtp] boardsize and clear_board
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:43:12 +0200
From: Joan Pons Semelis <SEMELIS(a)terra.es>
To: Chris Spencer <ckspencer(a)verizon.net>
References: <200507171946.j6HJkVKC003953(a)koeberg.lysator.liu.se>
<42DABE96.4050507(a)verizon.net>
Chris Spencer wrote:
> Gunnar Farnebäck wrote:
>
>> The reason to introduce clear_board was that it …
[View More]seemed silly to be
>> clearing the board as a side effect of setting the boardsize. It would
>> have been an option to still require boardsize to also clear the board
>> but I thought it made more sense to have those commands orthogonal. In
>> part this is also a symmetry with not requiring the board to be empty
>> at startup, which is useful when you can specify an initial position
>> externally (in the case of GNU Go as a command line option).
>>
>>
> Only the only problem I see with this rationale is that I can't think
> of a situation where I would resize the board without clearing it.
> Resizing the board without clearing results in a board with an
> essentially meaningless piece arraignment. Is there really a useful
> case where you would resize the board but wish to save the positions
> that weren't truncated as a result of the resizing?
>
Yes:
setting up a joseki of the type territory versus influence and cheking
again different sizes and rest of the board positions to see how the
influence side of the joseki works.
You can do this to a limited extend even in sgf format, and I use this
feature from time to time.
> I agree that it's intuitive to have a clear_board command. However,
> not clearing the board after a resize seems unintuitive to me.
>
> Sincerely,
> Chris Spencer
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
--
Joan Pons Semelis
http://www.terra.es/personal8/semelis/go
--
Joan Pons Semelis
http://www.terra.es/personal8/semelis/go
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GTP version 2 has been a draft for nearly 3 years now,
but it is becoming the de-facto standard for many programs.
Still, maybe it is not too late to discuss some basic commands.
I never understood why version 2 introduced the clear_board command.
What is the point of a separate boardsize command, if the engine's state is
undefined after the command and you still have to send a clear_board?
If the idea was to avoid a complete initialization of the Go engine, that is
something the engine …
[View More]could easily do internally.
- Markus
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