Banksia GUI released

[phhnguyen]

Xubuntu 18.04 - 4 Cores
When I launch Banksia GUI and click to make a move I have to wait about 4 minutes for the GUI to unfreeze. A process called "qt client leader window" runs at full speed on one core. After these freezing minutes, I can play at normal speed. Note this only happens once when the GUI is launched.

Thanks for the report.

I have just reinstalled Xubuntu 18.04 to my computer but can't reproduce the problem. Can you install/reinstall qt5 library as below command and try again? Thanks.

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sudo apt-get install qt5-default

[Canoike]

Thank you for answering but qt5-default is already the most recent version (5.9.5+dfsg-0ubuntu2.4).

Edit : I used a live usb and installed qt5. On a fresh install banksia is running smoothly. My PC is slowing QT somewhere.

[phhnguyen]

Thank you for answering but qt5-default is already the most recent version (5.9.5+dfsg-0ubuntu2.4).

Edit : I used a live usb and installed qt5. On a fresh install banksia is running smoothly. My PC is slowing QT somewhere.

I hope someone can help with that issue. Linux is not my daily working OS and I don't have much experience, sorry.

BSG's binaries for Linux are compiled on an Ubuntu 18.0. I plan (later) to create general binaries for multi Linux distros and/or publish it via Snapcraft.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Hi phhnguyen.

At the very beginning a huge thank you for the great work and new version of the program. Once you wrote that you like challenges. I have a huge request and huge calls for you. Someone in the forum has already asked you for it. Can you do in the program so that two computers play between themselves using LAN. A huge challenge for you from me.Thank you in advance.

[phhnguyen]

Hi phhnguyen.

At the very beginning a huge thank you for the great work and new version of the program. Once you wrote that you like challenges. I have a huge request and huge calls for you. Someone in the forum has already asked you for it. Can you do in the program so that two computers play between themselves using LAN. A huge challenge for you from me.Thank you in advance.

Thanks for the request.

The request is still in my TODO list, please wait

It is totally doable for me: I knew all the techniques I need and have already some thoughts, ideas, designs about it. However, what I worry about is how useful it is for the majority of users since nowadays people don't use LAN much. For example, in both my office and my home people almost don't use LAN (except for printing). If my daughter and I want to play a game via computers (without a physical board) we all access some Internet websites since it is much faster and much more convenient (we don't need to install or run any extra programs and worry how to connect them).

Any thought?

[BrendanJNorman]

Thanks for the request.

The request is still in my TODO list, please wait

Hi Nguyen,

I think a huge request that I think a big majority of users will share (besides fixing the Windows 10 crash bug), would be the ability to expand the UCI options window (see image below).



As you can see, for many engines, especially those with a lot of UCI options to tweak, tuning these options involves a tedious 'scrolling and pecking' process.

In the image you can see Rodent II, which has a couple of dozen UCI options, of which only about 5 are visible at once.

This makes it really difficult for tuning because it is hard to visually get a full picture of the overall settings as you're entering them.

In my Non-Programmer's view, the way to remedy this, would be either option 1, the ability to drag and expand the UCI options window (yellow arrow) or b, to create a button that can "pop-out" the UCI options window (green arrow and rectangle) into a fully visible window.

Again, I am not a programmer, so I have no idea which of these options would be easier to implement, but I do know that Arena has such things which makes tuning engines a breeze...unfortunately Arena is also plagued with more bugs than a Looney Tunes cartoon (get it? ).

What do you think?

[Guenther]

Thanks for the new preview version!

I think the buttons below the moves window don't work correctly when loading pgn files.

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|< = ok
<  =  >|
>  =  >|
>| = ok
>* = oscillating between start and end position? (intended?)

Thanks for the report!

However, I can't reproduce the problem even I have tried with many PGN files. If you can reproduce with a PGN file, please send it to me.

Note that those buttons are for scrolling moves:
|< = go first
< = go previous
> = go next
>| = go last
>* = auto scroll

(Ofc I know the meaning of those buttons - those are universal in all applications - not only in chess)

It seems it happens to all kind of pgn files I have. May be a weird Win7 problem (QT in this case)
and the button functions - also no comments are shown, but I don't know, if this is intentional?

I tried WB, Cute-Chess-Cli, CuteChess, CuteChess (modified by me) and CuteChess (modified and PGN beautifying with a macro by me) pgn files. The result is always the same, as described in my first post.

http://rwbc-chess.de/clip/banksia_pgn-replay.png


Three kinds of PGN files with that problems:

http://rwbc-chess.de/clip/Test20181104.7z
http://rwbc-chess.de/clip/20190708.7z
http://rwbc-chess.de/clip/171214.7z

[Ovyron]

In my Non-Programmer's view, the way to remedy this, would be either option 1, the ability to drag and expand the UCI options window (yellow arrow) or b, to create a button that can "pop-out" the UCI options window (green arrow and rectangle) into a fully visible window.

What about this? If you decrease the width of the Value Column and show several columns you can display up to 20 options per row!

[BrendanJNorman]

In my Non-Programmer's view, the way to remedy this, would be either option 1, the ability to drag and expand the UCI options window (yellow arrow) or b, to create a button that can "pop-out" the UCI options window (green arrow and rectangle) into a fully visible window.

What about this? If you decrease the width of the Value Column and show several columns you can display up to 20 options per row!

The user experience/UI would still suck because you're still squinting into a space that is about 10% of the overall window size, when it could easily be expanded and made clearly visible (all variables at once) with some code alterations/additions.

All other GUIs have such functionality (large UCI options window), and since Nguyen is already building the best GUI available, why not also expand the UCI options window as well?

[AdminX]

Hey Brendan,

Here is a new one. I call it 'Workbench'.

Click Image for Larger View