[eboard-devel] features ideas: timestamped pgn, timeseal autoinstall, rank stats, etc

[Saber T. <el...@el...>]

Hi,

	Some feature ideas for eboard. Pardon me for any eboard ignorance.

	A lot of ICS client power/convenience seems to be hindered by the seeming 
design of the server for a telnet-model of interaction. It'd be 
cleaner if the server and client were built from ground-up with strong 
integration with a powerful full-featured client in mind. Some missing 
features will be hard to come at from the client-side out of respect for the 
server's bandwidth. For example, it was suggested in channel 1 the other day 
that IRC-style room exit-entry notification be implemented on server. The 
only way to do add this feature strictly from the clientside would be to poll 
with an 'inchan' and that wouldn't be as optimal.

	Anyways, here's some ideas:

1.) ask on first execution if autodownload & install of timeseal.`uname -s` 
is desired.

requires:
-> ftp download (should use some standard Gnome or other lib) of 
ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/timeseal/timeseal/timeseal.Linux-2.0.29-i386. For 
simplicity's sake, I'd not support all the binaries unless it'd be convenient 
to let the user pick the right one.

2.) GUI sought game graph like Javaboard has. Was this implemented with a 
FICSbot to feed it data? I remember seeing messages about connecting to 
Javabot or some such entity. Ideal is for server to push new changes in 
sought data to client (instead of client pulling full list each refresh).

3.) Separate chat window for individual user tells. How about 3 different 
kinds of chat windows? 1 for room(s). 1 for individual people. 1 for 
miscellaneous. I haven't used the filter option. I'd like a window to be able 
to direct output, and input. Even with , and . aliases (which are confusing. 
aren't there always a bunch of "oops mistell" in channels?) it's not as 
speedy as typing in an input window that is sent as-is to the recipient(s).

"help channel_list" channel titles could be put in title of window.

4.) Automated login to ics. I'd like the option to do this without prompting.

5.) finger from right-clicking nickname in text. (somebody else mentioned 
this one also :o)

6.) postgame analysis with chess engine (locally, after the game is over).

one objective to consider is highlighting opening mistakes (perhaps like 
openbot, but i'd prefer a smaller opening book, perhaps with notes 
eventually).

the other is to set up the finished game against a computer engine. so you 
could pick a part of the game and see what the engine does. then pick a 
different part of the game from [i.e. you could get back on the mainline]. i
used to do this by exporting Cclient .pgn's to Chessmaster and it is very 
helpful. doing it with eboard may depend on what particular chess engine 
interfaces allow.

7.) PGN extensions: timestamps, rating. Personally I'm underimpressed with 
what [little] I know of the .pgn format. But extra info should be embeddable 
using comments I think. Or maybe there's a better savegame format around.

8.) Graphs of ranking over time. (Probably save a copy of rankings in a file 
especially for this feature.) I think this would be really cool to implement 
with Gnumeric through Bonobo. At least, if Gnome's Corba stuff is pleasant to 
use.

9.) Pause of game button. So I can look through start of game I'm observing 
(or playing).

10.) Support for local interaction with LectureBot lectures 
(http://www.freechess.org/~toddmf/lecbot.html). The lecture format looks 
reasonable, and there's Perl source to LectureBot there.

See ya on FICS.  :o)


Saber aka Psion

When I die, I want to be turned into a pinata. They could hang me from
a tree and blindfolded little kids could hit me with a stick, and the
first one to bust me open gets to keep whatever's inside. Maybe I'll
even eat a puppy or something first.                (Adrienne Zercher)