HCE feature requests

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Hasimir
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Post by Hasimir »

Okay there are a few little things I'd like to see at some point in the future:

1) Adding (restoring?) support for EPD files, ideally an import function which converts the FENs and related data to PGN (and/or the new db format if it needs to wait for HCE 2.x). It would be nice to be able to migrate old EPD data to HCE and take advantage of some of the test suites around.

2) Printing games is great, though it would be nice to optionally include the alternate colours which appear in the notation panel. Sure, it won't show up when physically printing (for most people), but printing to PDF is quite another matter.

3) Exporting that same data (including diagrams) to alternative, ideally open, file formats would also be useful. In particular I'm thinking of ODF and HTML, if only one then XML/HTML5. Why? Well more people are likely to want to post these things online than anything else and HTML opens certain other doors ... chess ePubs anyone? [N.B.: The Kindle users can convert from there with Calibre.]

4) The ability to override the "This is not a UCI engine" error in the preferences. If all HCE needs is that the thing it is talking to understands the UCI protocol and responds appropriately to commands then it shouldn't matter what's in there (including scripts or wrappers to other systems, engine types or even networks). Hiding that as an advanced option would be understandable, but given how relatively simple the UCI protocol actually is, this could open up a wealth of possibilities, regardless of platform HCE is installed on.

The next two have been mentioned a little via email, but may be worth mentioning here:

5) Support for one or more online chess servers (e.g. FICS). There's already some code in there enabling HCE to retrieve data via HTTP, some additional networking functions would be useful (but adding SSL/TLS would probably be a good idea).

6) A CLI or API back-end for coders to interact with in order to use HCE in conjunction with other systems, either by writing plugins for it or using it in conjucntion with plugins for other things (or both).

BTW, being able to combine no. 3, 5 and 6 can lead to some very interesting possibilities.
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Alpengreis
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Post by Alpengreis »

Also nice would be: a shortcut for "Save as new game" ...
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Hasimir
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Post by Hasimir »

Alpengreis wrote:Also nice would be: a shortcut for "Save as new game" ...
Seconded! I'd suggest Shift+Command+S (or Shift+Ctrl+S for the PC users) if it's not taken by some other function ... oh balls, it is ... alright, maybe Alt+Command/Ctrl+S then.

Brilliant suggestion that one, Alpengreis.
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JamesC
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View Game List

Post by JamesC »

I think it would make sense if the view game list button was grouped with the buttons for view analysis and view opening explorer.

Best

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martinus
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Post by martinus »

Someone already mentioned the rating points of an user expressed in qualitative scale from: "You barely know how to move the chess pieces" to "You should be ashamed of being a computer cheater"?
JamesC
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Limit engine output

Post by JamesC »

The latest engines output an awful lot of moves when analysing, especially in MV mode. Often we are only interested in the first few moves of a line. It would be good if there were a way to limit the output to the first N moves to make it more readable.

Similarly, when annotating a game, it would be good to be able to limit the length of the lines the engine adds, again to aid readability.
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