I agree with all of that. The -*ScoreIsAbs thing is new since 4.2.7; I don't know when it was added. I don't have an opinion about whether it's worthwhile having a user option about which POV to use in display. We have a zillion options already, so if some people want this, I don't see any harm in providing it -- we already lost the "keep it simple" battle years ago. :-)
On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:51:09 +0100, "h.g. muller" <[email protected]> wrote: > There was some discussion on TalkChess on the Point Of View that should > be used for score reporting. Although it is not mentioned in the specs, > de-facto standard is that engines always report scores from the POV of the > side to move. > > This leads to a bit of a chaotic situation (which I do not want to address at > this moment in case the engine is pondering), as some engines ponder the > position after a speculative expected opponent move (so that their ponder > scores are from the POV of the side they are actually playing), while others > ponder the position as it is, and report scores from the POV of the opponent. > > What I do want to address is score reporting while the engine is thinking / > analyzing. There are engines which systematically report scores from the > white POV. In my opinion, this is a non-compliancy, but to be able to > accomodate > such engines in cases where the score is used for adjudication, WinBoard > provides the option "-first(second)ScoreIsAbs true|false". In 4.4.1, > setting this > option causes a score flip in MachineBlack mode, or for the engine playing > black > in TwoMachines mode. > > Now it seems to me that it should be counted as a bug that this is not > extended > to other modes where the engine is evaluating a black move: IcsPlayingBlack > in zippy mode, and the various modes where an engine is analyzing > (AnalyzeMode, > AnalyzeFile or IcsObserving in zippy mode when the engine is analyzing the > observed game), and black has the move. Also there the standard is that > engines > should report from the POV of the side to move, so that engines that report > from > the white POV need their score flipped to correct their non-compliancy. > > Do we agree about that? > > (In these new mode the score is not really used for anything like > adjudication, > so it might not seem to matter that much, but the score is presented to the > user, > and one of the major reasons why users would use AnalyzeMode at all, so I > guess > this should count as a pretty important use.) > > Now a second, and independent question is this: > > Once all engines are compliant w.r.t. score reporting, or can be made > compliant with > the ScoreIsAbs option, what POV do we want to use for presenting this score > to the > user. It seems that the POV of the side to move, which is used now, is > compatible > with the EPD standard. There seem to be many users that hate it, though. > Should > this be a user-settable option? We could, for instance, have a check box in > the > Engine-Output window that would enable the user to select white POV or stm > POV. > > Is this worth having? > > -- Tim Mann [email protected] http://tim-mann.org/
