Re: Go Programming Environment Offered (?)

[Matt Gokey <mgokey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This looks like fine work! I was contemplating doing a similar environment myself
eventually - its a big effort! And a big effort to give away! Hats off ;)   I'd
thought of writing a specification for the environment and interfaces and publishing
it to the Go programming community to hash out final interfaces and build interest.
>From the information available, I'd say the design looks good and implements just
enough, but would you consider publishing a full specification (functionality and
public interfaces) for review and comments before a release is made public?

Some questions/comments:
    1.  Would you release full sources or binaries only?
    2.  Would/could the engines/players be implemented as DLLs or shared libraries?
          or are they statically linked?
    3.  Could engines written for this environment legally compete in tournaments?
    4.  How can it be designed to allow for a customizable user interface?
    5.  The argument raised in several responses about a class library as opposed to

         a full playing environment, I think has merits also.  Both ways have their
pros
         cons.  I could see classes for the GMP, for reading/writing game files, a
go
         board custom control class, abstract go engine class, zobrist hashing
class,
         abstract revertable container class maybe, pattern matching class
potentially, etc.
         To really make them work well together, you'd probably have to standardize
         on some data types and values though, but its worth considering as well.

BTW, my vote is for OpenGo and if you need any help, I'd be interested - I'm
familiar with some variants of Unix, and Mfc/Win32 environments and C/C++.   My
available time in the near future is not too good, however.

Matt Gokey