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

Erik van der Werf wrote:


Xavier Combelle wrote:


As a future contestant, I prefer the GTP solution, but
the decision is for the organizer, what do they exactly want ?
If any organizer could answer me, I would be pleased.

Nick Wedd wrote:
> I want more entrants, and happy entrants.

Same here, for the last Computer Olympiads our primary goal was to make it easy to participate. Therefore we did not want to enforce any specific communication protocol.

Personally, however, I do recommend supporting (not enforcing) GMP because it can help to gain time. 
It gain time for the organizer, but add difficulties for new entrants


In the last tournament there were several participants who implemented GTP and used it with GoGui as an interface. In principle this is nice because GoGui can connect to other programs over a serial cable using GMP. Unfortunately there were some (Java related) problems to get the GMP bridge to work properly, and therefore many games had to be played manually. It would be nice if this could be fixed. Moreover, I think it would be nice if the old cgoban would be extended with GTP support.
"CGoban 1 is no longer under active development."
http://www.igoweb.org/~wms/comp/cgoban/
So, you should hope instead that GoGui will evolve enough to fit your needs, for exemple.
The really point is that use the argument that the proxy GMP/GTP don't work, I need a referree
with GMP so GTP is not a solution is very doubtful.
There is at least two solutions: improve the proxy or change the referee.
The solution to impose a hard work to new entrants is not a good solution.

BTW How do people feel about the increased opportunities for foul play in network environments. It may be significantly harder for tournament organizers to deal with (accusations of) foul play...
Personnaly, if I thouht develop a program (and I'm seriously thinking about to do so),
but it was before I understood that today, there is only the GMP way.
And GMP clearly has security problems (because access to the serial ports).

If today there is only the GMP way, I will found that very absurd essentially
because there is noway that I can't garantee, staying at home, that my program will work
with a referee. So I can go to the competition and discover that I do the travel
for nothing. Oh my god !!! (as say a teacher of mine) Internet and GTP over TCP/IP to meet the referee
would be a good solution to solve *my* problem.

So I will have three choices:
1 - develop a good proxy GMP/GTP
2 - improve GoGui to act as a referee
3 - stop the development
4 - have hard work to make my program use GMP

And I really don't like to hard work for an absurd thing, so the
choice 4 is not really a choice.
So you have 33% of chance to loose a new entrant (choice 3),
you have 33% of chance to impose everybody to use GTP (choice 2);
you have 33% of chance to let any programmers to use the protocol he prefer (choice 1)

Of course, you really don't know if I'm a good go programmer,
but are you ready to bet on my capacities. But maybe a *very* good
programmer is staying quiet, please give to *him* this opportunity.
I really think that a good hacker (a genious programmer at the historical
sense of http://www.phaster.com/hacking_faq.shtml#hacker)
may simply quietly dismiss to use a bad protocol when a good one exists.

Xavier

PS: somebody may give me some money so I would chose choice 2 or
with more money choice 1. ;-)

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