Myracle GUI

[mar]

Truly amazing! Thank you for your work on this. It's really simple, and intuitive, and at the same time it has all the features I personally want. It's so fast too, and it seems stable so far.

Some small improvements I'd like to see (feel free to ignore):
1. A way to navigate a game using the mouse, with buttons or the scroll wheel. As it is, you can only do it with the keyboard arrows if I'm not mistaken.
2. Include a tag with engines' Elos in the tournament PGN.
3. When you use analysis engines on a random game and then stop the analysis and continue a paused tournament (unrelated to the game), the analysis engines are loaded along with the playing engines in the tournament games (even if you have stopped the analysis and closed the tab of that other game). This can be fixed by clicking on "Unload analysis engines", but I think it would be better if they didn't appear at all, if it's possible.

thanks.

1) it's possible to navigate a game simply by clicking the move list on the right (in fact you can keep holding the left button down while moving the mouse)
I never liked the mouse wheel navigation in other GUIs, because I sometimes did it by accident,
so not being able to navigate with mouse wheel is intentional and I don't plan to change that

2) engine elos in pgn would be easy enough to add, but the Elos have to be maintained manually so they may not correspond to reality.
in fact I didn't want to include engine elos at all, but Andres convinced me it's useful (also to show opponent avg in new tournament dialog when he builds a gauntlet when testing) - is it really useful? maybe I could make it optional in tournament settings,
not a big deal

3) yes, that's how it works, engines stay loaded but don't consume resources (except memory) when analysis is stopped.
I think it's fine - sometimes you want to stop analysis and examine the output, so I'll keep it this way

[vencenda]

I think I found a bug with "copy FEN" feature, but correct me if I'm missing something.
When you navigate a PGN and click on "copy FEN" after a black's move, the fullmove number is 1 less than it should be.
It's correct when you play a Human vs Human game for example, but it's wrong when you have loaded a PGN file.

Example:
After moves 1. e4 e5, if you click on "copy FEN" in a Human vs Human game, it gives:
rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/4p3/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 2
which is correct.

But if you have loaded a PGN file, after 1. e4 e5, if you click on "copy FEN", the program gives:
rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/4p3/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
The position is correct, but the fullmove number at the end is wrong. After black's move it should increase to 2.

[mar]

I think I found a bug with "copy FEN" feature, but correct me if I'm missing something.
When you navigate a PGN and click on "copy FEN" after a black's move, the fullmove number is 1 less than it should be.
It's correct when you play a Human vs Human game for example, but it's wrong when you have loaded a PGN file.

Example:
After moves 1. e4 e5, if you click on "copy FEN" in a Human vs Human game, it gives:
rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/4p3/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 2
which is correct.

But if you have loaded a PGN file, after 1. e4 e5, if you click on "copy FEN", the program gives:
rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/4p3/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
The position is correct, but the fullmove number at the end is wrong. After black's move it should increase to 2.

nice find, will be fixed in next build.sadly the forum is barely usable again so it took several attempts to login

[mar]

build 62 is up:
- optional save engine elo in tour pgn (settings/tournament)
- fix: copy FEN when selecting moves (correct move number)
- fix: close last game tabs when tour finishes
- fix: dialog sizes should be ok now on multi-DPI multi-monitor systems
- simple tournament overview window (active tours)

[Mark 1]

Hi Martin...

Thanks for uploading the new version!

Mark 1

[mar]

build 63 is up (got a late bug report, apologies):
- fix: egtpath option name for xboard engines
- fix: engine options autodetect, now removes old options so that they don't accumulate
(i.e. when swtiching uci<->xboard protocol for engines with dual-protocolor support)
- fix: autodetect options applies changes before loading the engine

[Gabor Szots]

Hi Martin...

Thanks for uploading the new version!

Mark 1

+1

[vencenda]

Thanks for the updates! It amazes me how fast and light this program feels. After years of using Arena, I think I've found a new GUI, or at least I'll use both.

---

There is a bug with tabs, where they disappear for some reason randomly. It happens with all tabs:
- main ones
- moves/tags dock
- book/results dock
- graph dock
- bottom dock

It happens when you have selected a tab other than the first one, and then minimize the program's window.
Every tab on the left of the selected one has disappeared when you restore the window. But it doesn't happen consistently.

I have tried to find a way to reliably reproduce it, but it isn't consistent. It happens quite often but it's unpredictable.
Some circumstances that may increase the probability of it appearing:
- after you first open the program
- after you have loaded a PGN file
- if you have selected specifically the "Tags" tab at "Moves/Tags" dock.
But it can happen randomly, and you have to minimize the window for it to appear.

Here's a video that shows the bug: https://youtu.be/BHmTO0JsrIk

---

Unrelated to the above, here are a few improvements I'd like to see (as always, feel free to ignore):
1. A default path for "Open file" action, under "Paths" settings, so you can set it to something different than the program's path.
2. A way to override engines' options for Hash and Threads, so you don't have to set it individually for each engine. That's already possible for Tournaments, but I'd like to see it also universally if that is possible, or otherwise just in "Analysis" settings.
3. To be able to use EPD opening books.
4. I mentioned this before, but I'll expand a little bit: I'd like it if there were 3 buttons at the bottom of "Moves/Tags" dock. One button for "previous move", one for "next move", and one for analysis (press to start analysis, and then press again to stop it.). I don’t know about other users, but in my case, it would make a huge difference in ease of use. Maybe it's partly because I'm used to Arena's layout, but I'd find it very useful.

Again, those are just suggestions, not demands. I know that those can become annoying after a while. The program is perfect as it is.

[mar]

Thanks for the updates! It amazes me how fast and light this program feels. After years of using Arena, I think I've found a new GUI, or at least I'll use both.

---

There is a bug with tabs, where they disappear for some reason randomly. It happens with all tabs:
- main ones
- moves/tags dock
- book/results dock
- graph dock
- bottom dock

It happens when you have selected a tab other than the first one, and then minimize the program's window.
Every tab on the left of the selected one has disappeared when you restore the window. But it doesn't happen consistently.

I have tried to find a way to reliably reproduce it, but it isn't consistent. It happens quite often but it's unpredictable.
Some circumstances that may increase the probability of it appearing:
- after you first open the program
- after you have loaded a PGN file
- if you have selected specifically the "Tags" tab at "Moves/Tags" dock.
But it can happen randomly, and you have to minimize the window for it to appear.

Here's a video that shows the bug: https://youtu.be/BHmTO0JsrIk

---

Unrelated to the above, here are a few improvements I'd like to see (as always, feel free to ignore):
1. A default path for "Open file" action, under "Paths" settings, so you can set it to something different than the program's path.
2. A way to override engines' options for Hash and Threads, so you don't have to set it individually for each engine. That's already possible for Tournaments, but I'd like to see it also universally if that is possible, or otherwise just in "Analysis" settings.
3. To be able to use EPD opening books.
4. I mentioned this before, but I'll expand a little bit: I'd like it if there were 3 buttons at the bottom of "Moves/Tags" dock. One button for "previous move", one for "next move", and one for analysis (press to start analysis, and then press again to stop it.). I don’t know about other users, but in my case, it would make a huge difference in ease of use. Maybe it's partly because I'm used to Arena's layout, but I'd find it very useful.

Again, those are just suggestions, not demands. I know that those can become annoying after a while. The program is perfect as it is.

the bug you describe is auto-scroll problem with tab bar, I can repro simply by adding a new tab - and scratch pad "disappears".
what really happens the tab bar just scrolls right, the tab is still there and you can navigate to it by either mouse wheel over
over the tab bar or (preferably) clicking the button on the right of the tabbar and selecting the other tab this way
this is a minor annoyance (I agree) but not something critical to fix at the moment, so I prefer to focus on real bugs now

1) - not planned

2) - I'm definitely against global overrides, per tour override is enough (and it's transparent because you immediately see that it's active)
after all the GUI primarily focuses on eng-eng tournaments

3) there is no EPD support and I still haven't decided whether to support it or not. full EPD support would also require
running suites which I don't actually need, but would be probably nice for completeness
also for openings EPD is inferior to PGN because it forces a startpos where you lose moves; so anything you can do with EPD for openings
you can do with PGN (except it'll be a bit more data with the tags)
still this would require extra work and I plan to invest that time elsewhere on some features that I find more important at the moment

4) I don't see what exactly this would solve. analysis has a hotkey (ctrl-shift-A)
and navigation by clicking the movelist seems perfectly adequate, also at the bottom definitely
not since this would waste precious vertical space. they might fit on the right to the tab bar with moves/tags
but like I said it feels redundant so I don't plan to add any buttons

[Mark 1]

Hi Martin...


Could the Schedule section display the number of moves for games that have already finished? This would make it easier to find and revisit particularly interesting short games.

Best regards
Mark 1