Possible improvements --------------------- 5. gray background for dark squares in 1-bit mode. Do this like xchess does. 12b. scoresheet text widget. Current move should be highlighted. Scoresheet could include comments or just have moves; latter is easier to fit on screen. 16. Allow move typein from keyboard. Maybe by typing into scoresheet, maybe a separate pop-up dialog. See also 64. Could allow multiple moves when in EditGame mode, to support X cut and paste from mail and news. 20. Some way to back up, explore variations, then return to the main line and restore moves we backed out. Should also support exploring side branches while loading a game file. Push/pop buttons? Button to fork another xboard in same state as current one? 20a. Allow side branches to be remembered in game files (and understood on LoadGame). 26. After sending move to machine, wait for positive acknowledgement or error message before proceeding; don't allow other events first. This will fix some race conditions and obscure bugs, and allow some new features---e.g., selecting Machine White when white is not on move. 42. Could generate ICS-style elapsed times on each move for games played against gnuchess. This should probably be optional. The same option could suppress the times on moves from ICS, maybe. (See also 46.) 43. Strength numbers from ICS are bogus if you use Backward/Forward. They are nice to have, though. Maybe xboard should generate correct ones itself. This could be done in non-ICS mode too. 46. LoadGame doesn't display ICS-style elapsed times on moves. To do this would require look-ahead or a parser change. Either is doable but ugly. A benefit of look-ahead is that one could use it to pop up comments along with the move they follow instead of on the next forward step. 49. It might be nicer to step slowly through movelists obtained from the ICS oldmoves command, as with LoadGame, instead of jumping to the end. 51. Look into not killing the chess programs unless really needed. Should really never be needed except possibly when we need to stop one while it's thinking. Even then a SIGINT should get it; we just have to deal with the bogus move it makes. 59. Make sure comment popup is wide enough considering font in use. Assume 80 characters is enough? [Not a problem in WinBoard.] 61. Darooha suggests having a separate small window for ICS typein, so that ICS messages that come in while you're typing don't mix with what you're typing. Your typing would be copied to the main ICS window when you hit return. WinBoard needs this even more than xboard because Windows consoles don't have the ^R (retype line) feature of Unix. Also, Windows console fonts are ugly. 62. Support more kinds of time controls (in gnuchess mode). Gnuchess already supports game-in-N and ICS-style incremental clocks, but xboard doesn't support these unless used in ICS mode, where ICS supplies the new time (adding the increment) with each board update. Perhaps (with gnuchess mods or some external help from xboard) gnuchess could also support the kind of clock where you get K seconds per move, plus a reserve of J seconds per game that is used when a move takes more than K seconds. The degenerate form of this with J=0 is desirable in itself. 62a. Support series of time controls as in recent gnuchess versions (and real tournaments!). 64. Allow move typein in algebraic. Could require coordinate notation and highlight the ranks/files as typed, or could accept general strings and parse with move parser. Latter seems better. Require a special key to start, or any letter? (Latter conflicts with xboard shortcut keys, but would work on WinBoard.) 65. Animate piece while moving. (Sounds hard.) 66. Double bughouse mode. (Lots of work.) 68. WinBoard has some features not in xboard: 68a. LoadGameOptions dialog (good to add) 68b. SaveGameOptions dialog (good to add) 68c. TimeControl dialog (good to add) 68d. Help. (don't care) 68g. Font dialog. (leave out) 68h. Colors dialog. (leave out) 68i. Board size on Options menu (good to add) 69. xboard has some features not in WinBoard: 69b. Alternate fonts specified by name. (need) 69c. Font size selection by pattern fill-in. (leave out) 69d. Alternate bitmaps specified at runtime. (leave out) 69e. Error message dialog is non-modal and disappears if you make a move. 74. Observe multiple games. Hard. 80. Clone command. Saves current game to a file foo, then starts up another copy of xboard with -lgf foo. Should probably note current state of some options and give command line flags to set them the same way in child. What about -ncp mode, though? Might want that to be different. Would be nice to have a -moveNumber flag to position the child to the same move number in the current game. 81. Measure and warn of lag in ICS mode, or some other kind of feedback to show the lag. 82. Optional highlights: (a) Square that was downclicked while making a move. (b) From and to squares of last move (by opponent?). 85. Rolling across menu bar with mouse button down should scan through menus. How to do this with Athena widgets? (Not a problem on WinBoard.) 87. Optional long notation, at least on screen (e.g., Bc1-b2). (user request) 89. Notice when user has selected a large font in -titleInWindow mode, and make sure the title line is wide enough for most messages; use Small format with title on separate line if not. 91. Would be nice to have an option to overwrite save file instead of appending. 92. Load last game in file command? 93. Auto font size for menu bar (in X) and move display window? 95. "Have the clock indicate how long the computer/player has been thinking for when the -st option is used. This should be how long for the current move only." (Dino Dini) 96. "Have a menu option to give gnuchess the 'both' command to play both sides. Useful for assessing which side is better off in a position. I know that you can start another gnuchess, but that is very wasteful of system resources." (Dino Dini) [may be hard] 97. "Have the ability to change the level of the gnuchess during a game. For analysis purposes, sometimes it is useful to have the computer think really hard about certain positions." (Dino Dini) 98. Reorganize the source and split it into more files. 99. Popup dialog showing all games in a PGN file, obtained by scanning the tags. Other nice PGN viewer features... 107. Changing time control during a game could be made to work. Current (WinBoard only) way of changing at start is suboptimal. 108. Could add search depth and time per move to (WinBoard) TimeControl dialog. 109. Could maybe add the rest of the init options to the option dialogs: initString, whiteString, blackString, first/second Host/ChessProgram, remoteShell, telnetProgram, ics Host/Port, useTelnet, gateway, debugMode, clockMode, etc. 117. Faster square drawing; precompute each piece/square color combo. Mostly useful in WinBoard. 125. Automatically start Windows NT telnet service if needed? 127. WinBoard: In useTelnet mode, we seem to get an extra NUL character after each \n\r sequence sent by ICS, and the NUL prints as a blank. At least I think that's what's happening. Probably a bug in NT telnet service; telnet protocol says send \r not followed by \n as \r\0, and evidently NT telnet is not stripping the \0 back out. ** I put in a kludge to work around this, and it works, but bug in telnet should be reported to Microsoft. Should check whether it is already fixed in NT 3.1 or 3.5. 127a. WinBoard: Another apparent telnet server bug: sometimes hangs after connecting---no login prompt. Hangs after "RCVD DO 24 (don't reply)" But it SHOULD reply to this (with WONT). Sometimes it does, and then things work fine. ** May have been a bug in NT beta only; seems OK in NT 3.1. 127b. WinBoard: We also seem to get bogus NULs when typing while ICS output is being displayed. I don't know where those are coming from; could be a concurrency problem accessing console from different threads, or something entirely different. 131. WinBoard: "Save settings" command to rewrite .ini file. Options menu or file menu? Exactly what is saved? 133. WinBoard: Comm port support needs more work. Can't change port while running, can't choose settings in init file or command line. Maybe program should use existing settings at open time instead of setting its own defaults? 137. Split up winboard.h to avoid annoying messages from dialog editor. 138. Split winboard.c in two? 139. Be sure that "White's flag fell" and the like always go away when they should; some gameMode changes may not be doing this. 140. LoadGame and LoadPosition need better checking for invalid data. 141. Merge Kevin Ziegler's term-ification code into xboard? 142. xboard needs a real file chooser dialog. Jeff Woolsey submitted code to merge in the one from Ghostview, but said it works only on X11R5 or later. I have not yet tried his code or looked to see if it could be made to work on X11R4. 144. Filter out ICS channel tells, messages, and echoes of your own "i" commands from consideration for boards, etc. Right now these cases are missed, but others are handled. (DAV on ICS) 145. eco popup, similar to book popup (Peter Chang) Old ideas I no longer think are so good: --------------------------------------- 12a. analog clocks 12c. jail 21. Maybe make LoadPosition parser smarter: able to skip arbitrary garbage before the position, able to tell when file doesn't contain a position, able to read positions in other common styles. (Tricky if some use the opposite case convention.) 23. Maybe allow LoadGame from SetupPosition mode, or even ForceMoves mode? No, I think it's better to reset the position first. A game file can now include a starting position, which seems better than loading position and subsequent moves separately. 55. Add lex-only mode to move parser---doesn't try to disambiguate moves or check for legality. Use to speed up scanning for nth game in a file. (?) 57. The move parser is slow on low-powered machines (e.g., VS2000). This is annoying when parsing ICS "oldmoves" or "moves" output to start observing a game. Can it be speeded up? 3. human-human playing? No, use ICS. 27. Maybe add some optional screen flash when gnuchess makes its move. No, I think -bell and the use of Forward/Backward to review moves without retracting them is good enough. 20b. Alternative: Have a set of memories accessable via the menus into which you can store, say, up to 10 positions (with all moves to that point and the clock times). (Dino Dini) 71. Allow restart after ICS logout instead of exiting? 72. Allow switching among ICS, NCP, GNU modes?? 73. Rename noChessProgram mode? Revamp command line options for 3 main modes. 63. Keyboard interface for moving pieces. Ideas: Arrow keys move selection highlight around. Highlight not visible until first key is pressed, then starts (where?). "picks up" piece, then arrow keys again to select destination. aborts move (no touch move here!). again to put down piece on new square. Could maybe have similar selection highlights on moves made with mouse. In EditPosition mode, brings up piece menu and empties current square. (These are PC keyboard keys. What to use on vanilla ASCII keyboard with X?) Also, a-h keys could move highlight to a-h file and 1-8 keys to 1-8th rank.