On Tue, 2002-08-06 at 03:00, Gunnar Farnebäck wrote:
The free handicap commands place_free_handicap and set_free_handicap let you do exactly this, so I suppose you're just opposed to including a fixed_handicap command in the protocol?
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I think that "fixed_handicap" implying certain locations for the stones is a terrible mistake; having the command isn't a mistake, just the way it is defined. Better would be to have the locations of the stones explicitly stated, possibly as part of the "fixed_handicap" command ("fixed_handicap 2 d4 q16" for example) and possibly as one or more followup commands (which was my original suggestion, to follow "fixed_handicap 2" with 2 "move b" commands). My suggestions for changing the way that "place_free_handicap" and "set_free_handicap" were just suggestions that I thought would simplify the command set a bit, they aren't nearly so important.
That was the worst case scenario. A cleaner solution is to just add a time_system command.
A time_system command would be a decent way to allow multiple time systems. Maybe add it now, with "time_system canadian" as the only defined variant, so that programs written now won't freak out later when the command is used?