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

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

Hi Steve,

You are right the eval bar makes more sense next to the board and
before the materials column. Originally as I wasnt sure if you will
include this patch in the upstream, I purposefully kept it after the
materials column, so that chances of me having to modify the patch for
newer revisions of the upstream in the future is minimum, if the
feature is not accepted in the upstream. But now that you are
including the feature, eval bar immediately next to the board is the
right thing.

Regarding the board in different places like main or analysis or fics
or so and in turn wrt analysis board, bcas it is currently always
linked to the main board, having the stm on analysis board normally is
redundant. However if one locks the analysis board and puts the main
board in trial mode, then both of them will be out of sync wrt one
another wrt the side to move, so for such situations having the stm
icon for analysis boards also will actually make sense. At the same
time, currently I havent looked at the stm code flow, but for whatever
reason I dont see the stm icons in analysis boards at my end, in case
if it is supposed to be there. Otherwise above you have the reason for
retaining them if you do show them wrt analysis boards
currently/already (I see the stm variable initialisation setting it to
1, but not sure why it doesnt appear for me currently, havent looked
at it).

Regarding the Traffic Lights, if you dont mind I would request you to
apply in the upstream with maybe either a options.dat entry or
additionally menu entry or so, which is set to disabled by default. I
see it has being useful, for people learning chess to know when they
need to be extra careful in evaluating the position before next move,
without looking at the actual PVs in the multipv. As also when
tracking a live or otherwise game and want a quick feedback from the
engine about the trickiness of the position. when guessing the next
move and so. Also if you look at the code, it intrusively changes the
existing code only to a very small extent. Otherwise in the worst case
I will hardwire the revision of the source picked by snapcraft to a
validated version and then apply the patch to it.

On Sat, Dec 28, 2024 at 2:16 PM Steve A <ste...@gm...> wrote:
>
> Ok, I've backed out the sbar scorebar and made an initial commit for your eval bar. Could you rebase to this, thanks.
>
> We need to rethink our ::board::new defaults/args... but I don't think we need a STM on your analysis boards.... gets too confusing in "Position" mode.
> I've shuffled the eval board over to the left of the material.
>
> I'm just going to back out all the analysis(mini) stuff next and change over to a main board eval bar.
>
> Re Traffic lights.... I can see it's a "cute" feature, but not sure about it.
>
> Cheers, S.A.
>
> On Fri, Dec 27, 2024 at 6:33 AM Steve A <ste...@gm...> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe your score bar is best.. I'll look at reverting mine and including yours on the main board.
>> Cheers
>>
>> On Thursday, December 26, 2024, C Hanish Menon <han...@gm...> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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



-- 
Keep ;-)
HanishKVC