Pascal Georges wrote:
Hi!
> Defining a protocol or a WS is obvious. To have a site
> that provides the data, and in a reliable way, is 99% of
> the work.
Sure.
> See the problem to find a site allowing the use of their
> online tablebases : I found none.
I remembered that point. We also discussed that in another
group, our main problem was the TB of storage necessary to
host it. Anyway.
> So I would try to gather the data and set up the site,
> then only after that (when I have the matter) would I
> think about standards.
Well, right now I'm a bit sort of a race condition: If I
just invent a protocol it is of no use. I perfectly agree
with you in this point. If I work together with a site admin
to get this up, you say there is the problem to turn Scid
into a "propaganda tool" (exagerating, of course) for that
site. This is absolutely not my intention, just to keep this
straight. This is also the reason why I'll always stress an
open protocol.
How to proceed?
Maybe I should make the current ideas a bit more concrete.
The Club I'm playing at offers a great database of annotated
openings. This DB is still work in progress but
_substential_ parts are done, and really good people are
working at it.
Now, the Clubs admin is also pretty interested in supporting
OpenSource software, and he'd like to offer seemless
integration of the work done at the Club for the members. On
the other hand, the Club also has, of course, some interest
to find new members to fund its acitivities. For this reason
this opening DB is free only up to the 3rd move or something
the like, beyond that you'll only get statisitics from the
Clubs game base, but no annotations. Unless you're a member
of the Club. I find all this resonable practise, plus I'd
like to stress the point that we're talking about a usual
chess club here, not a company. Ie. the membership fees are
used to keep up the Club, no profit is gained, it is
strictly "non-profit". (Ie. membership fee is "(expenses +
some small reserve) / number of members". If we'd gain
profit we'd have to pay taxes. Currently, we do not, that is
the financial minister himself approves that this Club is
"non-profit".) Still, the above would require e.g. UID/PW
and it involves so to say a "non-free" service, ie. unlike
FICS.
Now, if I work together with our admin, I think I could add
a valuable source to Scid, though of course the club members
would profit the most. On the other hand, we were talking
about open protocols, so other Clubs might offer similar
services. The point that there is a simple protocol plus a
free application that can use it might encourage this,
however I'm absolutely not sure about the real potential.
Right now, I just do not know of any doing it. Look at
Xfcc, e.g. There're to the best of my knowledge only 3 sites
supporting it. Ok, one is ICCF, the other takes part in
international tournaments and the third sometimes hots BdF
events. Could be worse ;)
Therefore, the question arrises. If I work with our admin
and we come up with some set of open protocols, would this
then considered to be promotion of a site? Or would this be
ok?
One might keep in mind here: for the opening annotations a
function like "tell me all about FEN" would be used. From a
programming point of view this would probably be almost
identical to the tablebases support you mentioned above.
Other services in this framework involve e.g. "get me all
club games since dd/mm/yy" (I imainge something like OAI-PMH
here) or "get me all games of tournament x". Maybe one
could later on have: "give me all games matching <place the
header search here>" or whatever. Another idea is to
integrate access to the Clubs members base, internal rating,
player reports and so on. We'd however start out with the
simplest ones. From the "definition of the problem" these
are usual queries if you deal with games of chess, I'd say.
Its not specific to the site as such. But to have some
content to offer it would make some sense to develop it with
a willing site admin, IMHO.
What do you (and the others here on this list) think about
this?
> To have a norm for "web services for chess" will not mean
> the logistics will follow.
Sure.
--
Kind regards, / War is Peace.
| Freedom is Slavery.
Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength.
|
| Theory : G. Orwell, "1984"
/ In practice: USA, since 2001
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