Hello,
On Tuesday 08 October 2002 17:37, A van Kessel wrote:
The overall design philosophy of GTP is: keep it simple, small and extensible. Only the commands that are common to all implementaions (those needed to make the program play a game) are standardised.
I think it's obvious that I understand that and appreciate the value of simplicity. I just need some more information because there is so little available.
a) GTP version 1 was never formalised. AFAIK there is no standard per se, just the Gnugo reference implementation.
b) GTP version 2 is still an incomplete draft. There is no reference implementation. The only two implementations I know of for GTP V2 are: Wallyplus and AmigoPlus.
c) Basically I am asking for clarifications and making suggestions for the draft, based on my experience and the doubts that I have that result from the work on the two programs above.
Now, I just need a clarification: the showboard command should cause the engine to output the board diagram to stderr or stdout?
The reply from Gunnar and the draft itself seem to indicate that the output goes to stdout, along with the normal GTP stream. The GNU Go implementation and Adrian's postings suggest that it goes to stderr. For various practical reasons, I prefer stdout. I also consider it quite strange to have a single GTP command causing the engine to emit an output to stderr, whereas all the other commands cause the engine to use stdout. IMHO that makes the GTP command set irregular and detracts from the KISS principle.
I would be grateful for a clarification of the matter, so that this issue is decided and I can Go on with my Go engine programming projects. :-)
Thanks,