Ras wrote:All the stuff that is there and shouldn't even be necessary. Command line options? Special Winboard options? This is one of the reasons why UCI came around, because of this mess (the ini file hell is missing, but likely hidden elsewhere).
Uh? Some engines
need command-line options, e.g. to specify you want to run them in a GUI, rather than in stand-alone (ASCII) mode. How do you run those engines in Shredder GUI?
How do you run a JavaScript UCI engine in Shredder GUI? (Or a Java engine? Or a Haskell engine?) In WinBoard you select Node.js as engine, and the .js file as command-line option.
The only thing worse than that is probably the Winboard startup dialogue.
What is bad there? You just select the engine from a combo-box...
Plus that even rudimentary GUI 101 is not being followed. Checkboxes for mutually exclusive options are nonsense.
In contrast to what you think, WB v1 and UCI are NOT mutually exclusive. 'UCI' invokes the protocol adapter. This could conceivably use WB v1 protocol.
The most user-friendly chess GUI I've used so far is the Shredder GUI:
- click Menu->Extras->Engines->Install Engine
Engine->Load 1st Engine in WinBoard is only 2 menu levels deep, so that is 3-2 in favor of WinBoard to start with...
- a dialogue box opens where a dropdown combo box allows to select UCI/WB
Tick 'UCI' or do nothing in WinBoard.
- after that, another dialogue box opens where you can either enter the path or click on a "..." button (4-2.5).
I WinBoard you could click that button straight away, without first selecting something to make something else open (5-3.5).
- after that, another dialogue opens where name of the engine and autor (as derived from the engine itself) appears, but you can change them if you want
- a final confirmation "engine successfully installed" appears.
Again, changing the name would already have been posible in the original dialog for WinBoard ('Nickname'). But usually you would not do that, so I won't count it. Also in WinBoard you now just 'confirm' by clicking 'OK' (6-4.5 for WinBoard...).
You don't have loads of stuff to enter that shouldn't even be necessary.
You also don't have to enter stuff that is not necessary in WinBoard. OTOH, it seems you cannot enter some stuff that sometimes is necessary in Shredder. E.g. explain us what you would have to do in addition when
- You want to make the engine use the opening book
- The engine can only play Crazyhouse, and you want Shredder to switch to Crazyhouse whenever you load it. (Ouch... OK, replace Crazyhouse by Chess960.)
- The engine is Java or JavaScript.
- Need to run an engine that requires "POS --io-mode xboard" as start command.
- You want to handicap the engine by a time-odds factor.
In WinBoard the first two would only require a single click, the third nothing special for Java, the fourth requires you to type "--io-mode xboard" for the command-line option, and the last one just to type the GUI option. (Because it is considered something only advanced users would ever want.)
Also note that in WinBoard you don't have to
guess where to find a menu for handling the engine (File or Extra). It appears immediately on the main menu bar.
So by objective measure WinBoard is 25% more user-friendly than Shredder. Your comment seems to lack any kind of objectivity. In fact it is close to the worst bullshit I ever saw...