Re: [Scidvspc-devel] Patch1: Eval bar for boards, inturn Enabled for Analysis Board

[C H. M. <han...@gm...>]

Hi Steve

You seem to be intermixing different things & complicating things.

Rather visualising logic should be independent of from where the data comes.

Also for all the reasons you are also worrying about involving different
possible boards, the best place for the eval bar is next to the board it
corresponds to & not status bar (atleast that's what I feel)

So also why may patch updates board code to add generic eval bar helper in
there

Also having the bar next & parallel vertically to the board also helps
convey the position status in a direct way next to the pieces and the side
with advantage in a matter of fact. It also helps identify/differentiate
the different significant milestones in the data/bar like pawn or piece
gain/loss or beyond

Depending on which board one is talking about, where the data to drive it
comes would depend.

Like for

1. the anal board, the data from the corresponding anal engine is what
suffices (and that is what my patch does)

2. For multiple fics boards, if there is data about eval coming from fics
feed, that is what should allow enabling or disabling the bar wrt that board

3. For Main board, depending on the context, one should decide, like say

3.1 if viewing a specific fics game on main board, eval data if any bundled
with fics data may be useful to give precedence, as default

3.2 if its a game involving a engine(s), engines' eval of position could
drive it by default

3.3 in all other cases as well as if user so prefers for the above two
cases also, a local independent engine (with a default, overridable by
user), can drive the eval bar


Regarding what other programs or sites are doing, no idea, bcas I am
looking at chess after few years now (and its always been like that for me,
ie few weeks once every few years). However looking at what FIDE &
cheesebase India & few other streams showed during the game it appeared
like mostly linear with maybe log for last blocks/rows of the bar or so.
However I wasn't concentrating on them beyond the basic glances, so I may
be wrong.


However thinking about it on its own, I felt there is two different ways
the data could be conveyed, which different people may find useful. One is
the simple linear bar and the other is the lin+log which I coded. Where I
have 1st sqs/rows to either side of mid point making to pawn gain/loss
(inturn linear). 2nd squares/rows away from mid to minor piece gain/loss,
3rd sq to roughly to queen+ or so and then beyond (also maths maps roughly
nicely to those boundaries)

On Thu, Dec 26, 2024, 12:26 Steve A <ste...@gm...> wrote:

> Yeah, it works under Linux, so not sure of the problem on macOS.
> Nice looking eval bar :)
>
> But like i said... it's value in the mini engine board is ok, but not a
> deal breaker as you have the numbers there anyway/
> And it's totally chaos trying to attach something like this to most normal
> boards .
>
> I'll see if i can get my eval bar working on *any* engine sometime these
> hols.
> Maybe you have some ideas about if it should be handled by some other
> algortithm rather than just +-5
> S.A.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2024 at 3:39 PM Steve A <ste...@gm...> wrote:
>
>> PS , I'm not keen on a vertical eval bar like most guis have.. It's just
>> too distracting.
>> So probably just give this a miss now that i have one in the statusbar.
>> cheers
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2024 at 2:11 PM Steve A <ste...@gm...> wrote:
>>
>>> Hmmm... Looks nice :) but it keeps disappearing on my macbook.
>>> It's normally not viewable ??
>>>
>>> But what you are doing is not too well designed.
>>> How are you going to connect the main board (or, say a fics observed
>>> board) to an engine.
>>> It looks like this only works with engine mini. boards.
>>> Moreover, it is *very* complicated to put in a generic board eval class.
>>> For example - say i have no engines running, but am observing 3 fics
>>> games as mini boards
>>> I need three extra engines running in quiet mode to show eval bars on
>>> the observed games. Kindof impossible.
>>> A generic board eval bar would be great for the game browser (for
>>> example), but just way too hard imho.
>>> Of course putting one on the engine mini board (like you have done -
>>> except it keeps disappearing on my mac!) may be a great idea.
>>>
>>> Have you noticed i've already coded an eval bar yesterday.
>>> I should probably make it work with *any* engine rather than the second
>>> engine only.
>>>
>>> I haven't given linear/log any thoughts. At the moment my bar is just +-5
>>> linear.
>>> What do other websites / guis use?
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2024 at 9:44 AM C Hanish Menon <han...@gm...>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> This patch adds generic support for showing eval bar wrt any specified
>>>> board. Inturn the same is enabled for analysis boards and the main
>>>> pv's score is shown as the evalbar.
>>>>
>>>> Have implemented two different versions of eval bar, one is a simple
>>>> linear one and another is a combination of linear+logarithmic one.
>>>>
>>>> The simple linear version shows the eval bar linearly wrt -4 to 4 with
>>>> clipping of values beyond it
>>>>
>>>> The linear+log version shows a linear movement wrt -1 to 1 which maps
>>>> to being adjacent to the 4 and 5 rows, and a logarithmic movement for
>>>> beyond. The log values are mapped such that crossing 3 and 6 rows map
>>>> to be equivalent to gaining or losing a minor piece and 2 and 7 rows
>>>> map to gaining or losing 10 points, and remaining beyond.
>>>>
>>>> Currently I havent tried to enable this for MainBoard. As one may want
>>>> to add an option entry to menu or buttons bar or ...
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Keep ;-)
>>>> HanishKVC
>>>>
>>>