On Sunday 17 July 2005 18:54, Chris Spencer wrote:
Not clearing the board just leads to confusion should you forget to explicitly tell the computer to resize AND clear, then it starts playing with a corrupted board.
I agree. The boardsize parameter is a lot more essential than other parameters. While you can play a game ignoring the komi or time settings, you can hardly play without agreeing on the board size first.
Even if there was a rare occasion when a GTP controller program can do something meaningful without knowing the board size, this should be done with a private extension command, instead of putting the additional burden on all programmers to send and implement two commands.
The name 'boardsize' is a bit misleading, it should have been 'new_game', but that is not a big problem IMO.
I would propose to drop clear_board in GTP version 3 (or declare it deprecated or optional) and require boardsize to clear the board, like it was in version 1.
- Markus