On Monday, November 4, 2002, at 01:23 PM, A van Kessel wrote:
*) should the aborted command ("genmove", in most cases) report [...]
The intended use, so far, for this abort command (when the user wants to undo it's last move, or to force a move after some elapsed time) makes me wonder if other optional commands would not be better:
start_thinking stop_thinking best_move
It's not that different from genmove, abort, report_post_abortum_move, but I think the semantics is clearer.
However, one could wish to interrupt other lengthy operations, like scoring or getting a status or another. For instance, in our Goban application for Mac, we use GNU Go to score finished games, using the "final_status_list dead 2" command, and we just kill the process after some time if we don't get an answer.
(Doing this may not be very elegant or efficient, but could also be used when a UI client wants to undo without waiting for the reply: just kill and start a new process. Note that none of our users complained yet that undo was not available while the program was thinking.)
If such changes are introduced to GTP, shouldn't we also take into account the possibility for the engine to use the opponent's time to think?
Marco Scheurer Sen:te, Lausanne, Switzerland http://www.sente.ch