Rodrigue wrote:
1- the BOARD command should accept to create rectangular gobans... the question is why restrict it to square only ? I understand gtp is designed to enable testing on software programs ? then please let the possibility to foster some diversity...
I considered including rectangular boards but I couldn't convince myself that it would be worth the extra burden on the protocol, however small it may seem.
It would be good to see gnugo on a 4x7 board for instance :-)
The interface issues are the least of worries in this case. There simply aren't any provisions in the code to handle rectangular boards and it would require major work to add it.
2- "Boards larger than 25x25 are not supported by the protocol." Why?
To allow using the most convenient coordinate specification that was already in regular use, of course.
Is it so complex to use another coordinate systems as 1,1 instead of A1?
In some ways it's even easier to to use two integers, in other ways it's a much worse choice. But let's face reality: only a very tiny fraction of go games is played on any other boards than 19x19, 9x9, and 13x13. 7x7 has seen some interest during the evolution of Monte-Carlo programs and very occasional 21x21 games can be seen on the go servers. Anything else is rare.
I could have included support for rectangular boards, huge boards, 3D boards, or go on general graphs but it's not worth the overhead having standard features that neither engine writers nor GUI writers have much interest in supporting.
I know SGF has the same limitations, but why imposing such limitations?
In the sgf case the limit is 52x52 in order to keep the file size small while retaining a reasonably simple encoding.
is that another heresy to think about a 51x53 board ? played by two softwares for instance ? OK i'm definitely an heretic... for now :-)
For anyone who wants it's quite easy to add private extensions for rectangular boards, huge boards, etc. Feel free.
3- the last but not the least concerns the time_settings. And here it's a special request : why not offer the possibility to set different time settings for each player ?
Time management is a can of worms. It would be useful to have quite a few more time systems (Japanese byo-yomi, Fisher time, ...) but it would also increase the burden on the programmers to try to implement support for a wide variety of time systems.
That said I don't find asymmetric time settings (within the same system) unreasonable but again not quite worth the trouble.
again i think it would be fun to afford more time for gnugo than for myself. That would put more pressure on me...
In the GNU Go case it would work to cheat and immediately report less time left than the time settings indicated but I can't recommend it as a general workaround. :-)
ok i talk a lot about gnugo but i understand that the spec is tightly bound to gnugo or the opposite ...
It was originally designed for the needs of GNU Go but seems to have been reasonably useful for other engines too. There are certainly a number of limitations imposed by the protocol but I don't think anyone else has brought up board size limitations as a major concern before.
Hope that i'm not off topic.
You couldn't get much more on topic. :-)
/Gunnar