Banksia GUI released

[Ozymandias]

This is odd, when in "on the fly analysis" I can't make different moves going back.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Good morning Pham,
what are these engines with weird names like for example: jane:Stockfish14, jane:Minic10, in your picture.

[Ozymandias]

Hmm, I wonder if 0.53 was the end of the road. The developer was very active before, but not a peep since the release (he's in other threads, though).

[AlexChess]

Hmm, I wonder if 0.53 was the end of the road. The developer was very active before, but not a peep since the release (he's in other threads, though).

I hope Pham is only busy Nobody like him for skills and kindness in developing a stunning FREE tool for the whole chess community!

[matejst]

Hmm, I wonder if 0.53 was the end of the road. The developer was very active before, but not a peep since the release (he's in other threads, though).

I don't think so. He has done so much work so far I would be surprised if he left such a promising project, especially now, when it is all about details and ergonomics.

So far, from what I have seen:
-- the GUI is a bit cluttered, but overall beautiful.
-- The books are primarily used for engine matches; book moves are not displayed when analyzing a pgn -- I most probably missed the adequate setting.
-- The analysis functions are great -- on the fly, and extreme position analysis.
-- I did not try to run eng-eng matches, but I am sure Banksia shines on this aspect.

Overall, I think Pham should take his time, and slowly sort out the details. As it is, Banksia GUI looks good and works well. Users should focus on bugs, not on endless requests. It has already more options than any of the other current GUIs. It would make sense to just make the existing options work well and flawlessly.

[Ozymandias]

Users should focus on bugs, not on endless requests. It has already more options than any of the other current GUIs.

And yet it lacks the most basic of options to properly analyze a position (variations). It's the only GUI I've ever seen that offers analysis but doesn't really let you get on with it. Just letting it sit there on a position while looking at the engine output isn't what anyone considers "analyzing", more like kibitzing.

[purechess]

It's the only GUI I've ever seen that offers analysis but doesn't really let you get on with it. Just letting it sit there on a position while looking at the engine output isn't what anyone considers "analyzing", more like kibitzing.

What you mean by "let you go on with it" ?

[ydebilloez]

I have regular crashes with Banksia, both running on macOS and on Linux. I tracked the issue down to the parsing of engine output. read_stdout->parseLine->parseInfo->vector out of range.

During this crash, Banksia quits and leaves the engines running. kill -9 required.

I believe this is the same crash I had with earlier versions and that I fixed by not outputting UTF-8 strings ... But this time, crash occurs with UTF-8 and ASCII.

[matejst]

And yet it lacks the most basic of options to properly analyze a position (variations). It's the only GUI I've ever seen that offers analysis but doesn't really let you get on with it. Just letting it sit there on a position while looking at the engine output isn't what anyone considers "analyzing", more like kibitzing.

Let's start with kibitzing, it is good enough most of the time. I think it is very important that all features are streamlined, optimized and stable. There are a lot of things that force me to use other interfaces instead of Banksia, but as it is, it is a good start, and a stable GUI with less options is always better than a buggy GUI with lots of options. From the beginning most of the requests were about engine matches and engine testing, so Banksia is lagging in features for other use, but it is better now.

[Ozymandias]

When you take on features like "extreme analysis", you can't consider variations as a feature. They should be a given. You don't start running before learning to walk, and yet, that's exactly what be have in this GUI.