[computer-go] how to use GTP in place of GMP

[Nick Wedd <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am still thinking of this from the practical standpoint of the person 
who may be asked to run the EGC 2005 computer Go tournament.

In reality I doubt that GTP will play any part in this.  But suppose the 
sponsors tell me "we have heard that GTP is better than GMP, please run 
this event using GTP, and insist that entrants support it".  What am I 
going to do?

Let's assume that the sponsors have provided a bunch of Windows PCs on a 
LAN, and that I have six months to tell potential entrants what is 
required of them.  What might I tell them, and what will I have to 
provide myself?  Assume that I can get details of the LAN, let's suppose 
it is category 5 cable with five twisted pairs, and a 100Mb router;  I 
don't know whether this is relevant.

Arend wrote
"'Protocol will be GTP, have your program listen on port 12345.' Is that 
any more difficult?".
This does not mean much to me.  Should I expect it to be meaningful to 
all potential entrants?  Does it imply that I have to create something 
which talks on these ports 12345?

William wrote
"I thought all that GTP needs is the ability to push bytes down a 
channel and slurp bytes out of the channel (implicitly reliably, since 
it doesn't have any checksumming or retrying or anything like that). 
It's straightforward to map that model (pushing and slurping bytes) onto 
any number of transports".
I don't know what a channel is.  I don't know what a transport is.  I am 
only a stupid Windows programmer.  I do know what a serial cable is, I 
even have some, so I can manage GMP.

Paul wrote
"I would imagine a GTP tournament rules look like this:
  * Tournament entrant programs will connect via GTP to our referee
    (residing on a dedicated machine).
  * Programs working under Windows, any flavour of UNIX-like system or
    Mac OS X can simply speak GTP on stdin/stdout.  The organizers will
    provide all necessary proxy scripts to connect to the referee
    machine."
I don't have a referee program.  I probably don't have the skill to 
write one.  Same for proxy scripts.

Don wrote
"You also need software (GMP needs software too,  but it's linked into
the program.)  The software can  be linked into the programs just like
GMP if it makes you happy.  Or it can be a separate program running in
the  background on one  of the  computers.  It  will take  very little
resources.  If this  bothers you or you think it  unfair, keep in mind
that your  computer probably  has dozens of  processes running  in the
background, most of them also taking close to zero resources."
    It is not the resources consumed by this process that bothers me. 
It is the thought that I may be expected to provide it, or even merely 
to specify it.  If a contestant tells me "all you should have done was 
write a script that slurps bytes from port 12345 and channels them to 
your referee's default transport", then no-one is going to be happy.

I can see that GTP is not going to supersede GMP.  Those who have 
advocated GTP as a replacement for GMP have missed the point that it is 
a different-shaped animal.  Maybe something that _uses_ GTP will 
supersede GMP - when someone tells me what this is, I shall listen.

Nick
--
Nick Wedd    nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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