Re: [XBoard-devel] Load Next / Prev Position menu

[Arun Persaud]

Hi

> I guess the problem would be that FENs have no tags. In the game list
> you see the seected tags (like player names) displayed on the line for that
> game, so it can serve as basis toselect it. But what would you display
> in the
> corresponding "Position List"? The FEN itself might even fit, but it is not
> a big help in deciding which one you would like to see. You don't want the
> user to decode the FEN by eye. The qickest way to decide which position
> you want is to first see it. But then you have already loaded it, and
> you have
> seen all there is. That is completely different for a game: recognizing
> a game
> would take forever, especially since in the beginning they all look
> alike...
> So there you recognize by the tags, and having them represented in the
> gamelist in a controlled format is a big help.

The easiest way would just be to print "position 1" "position 2", etc..
you click on them and the position shows up on the board, where you can
check if it's the one you want... I think this would be similar to if
you have a "next/previous position" menu entry.. there you also don't
know what you get...

A nicer way would be to show a small picture of the position. To create
these you would have to load them in xboard, but I think this would be
pretty nice... the window could then have a list with a name (say
position N) and a picture next to it and you click on it, you see the
position on the large board from where you can play around with it,
start an engine to analyze it or do whatever you wanted to do ;)

This could be also nice for multiple games, you could show the name and
a picture of the end position (or something in the middle or the
beginning or animated on mouse-over) for example, that could help
finding the right game out of a long list of games... say you want to
find the game where you played that interesting endgame, but don't
remember the details of the game...

Probably too much work, but I think it would be a nice touch... Anyway,
I would go with just giving the positions a generic name and number them...

ARUN