Re: [XBoard-devel] 4.4.1

[h.g. muller]

> I agree but just putting it into the space reserved for the PV field would 
> be confusing.
> In analysis mode the move the engine is thinking about is shown
> in the header of the engine output window and not as part of the thinking 
> output.

Well, I had a look at how analysis mode works in XBoard, and it seemed to 
me that
the Engine-Output window provides al the information the Analysis window 
provides,
and in a superior way. It could even be made smaller than the Analysis 
window without
losing any info.

I am not sure which confusion you are worried about. We could define a new 
standard
for the thinking-output format that provides backward compatibility by 
putting extra info
in the PV field. A GUI that recognizes this extra info would strip it out 
of the thinking output
before displaying the latter. Like having some extra stuff at the beginning 
of the PV field
in braces or brackets., say [1/20 a2a3].

An alternative would be to use a kludge similar to the UCI infoline kludge 
we use in Polyglot:
define a special combination of node count and time unlikely to occur in 
true thinking output,
and use those for the extra info.

It would have been better if "Analysis mode" had not exited s a separate 
game mode at all;
logically it is equivalent to edit-game mode with ponder on. So it should 
really be treated
as a ponder mode, rather than a game mode. Which means that everything that 
the same
things should be allowed and the same thinking output should be sent in 
either mode.
But this periodic-updates stuff is best deprecated...

> Oh well. I will feel sorry to see the analysis window go.