Banksia GUI released

[phhnguyen]

To translate for BanksiaGUI, please visit the below link and follow the guide:

https://github.com/nguyenpham/BanksiaGUI-Translation

Nice, I'll help with Spanish

Thanks in advance

[phhnguyen]

A video created by Ted Summers (thanks Ted) shows how to arrange BanksiaGUI's panels and set up manually a theme (similar to the Metal theme):

[phhnguyen]

Extreme Chess Analysis backup system (Blog post)

Any data of the user is precious and so is a tree of ECA. If a tree is corrupted or lost, it is a serious hurt since it may take a long time running computers to have.
The problem is that the ECA’s trees are somewhat quite vulnerable to be corrupted since they are typically huge, text formats, take time to write down, written in high frequency and the whole computing process (to expand and evaluate the tree) may take a very long time. Any interruption when writing such as computers/software crashes or sudden shutdown… may end in broken data. Because the data of a tree is typically huge, it’s not easy to find and fix a broken one or not worth doing that. In most cases, we should dump it and use backup data instead.


ECA backup files
ECA saves the computing tree to the hard disk whenever there’s a change such as branches expanded or a node evaluated. If the user does not do those tasks, there is not any writing and he may ignore this trouble.
With the recent releases, all ECA files are stored in the BanksiaGUI configuration folder. ECA auto-creates several backup files, previous data files are automatically renamed and/or copied into multiple files. They are:
- Normal backup files: all previous tree data are written in 5 backup files with extensions started from .json.bk.1. The older files are auto deleted
- Daily backup: the tree is automatically stored in a backup file with extension in form of .json.dayYYYYMMDD, e.g., .json.day20210725. Different from normal backups, BSG doesn’t delete those files. Users are suggested to check and delete old files to save space
The backup system is designed to save as much as possible the work when some incident happens. ECA tries to minimize the potential work loss to be just a few hours or a day.

Verify
After loading the data, ECA always auto-verify data to check the correctness and consistency. It may pop up a dialog box to inform the user if it sees any problem

Load data from a backup
Click on the button Data files, BSG pops up a dialogue to show all data files. Users can select anyone to delete or load 

What users can do to help
- Frequent manually backup data (clone projects)
- Shutdown gently: avoid shutdown BSG or computers when ECA computing since the data may be being written. It’s the best if the user clicks on the Stop button to stop it first, wait for a second (that period is enough for computing writing down) then do what they want.

[phhnguyen]

Version 0.47 beta released


Fixed bugs:
* Fix Lichess bots
* A bug on pondering for engines
* A bug on Polyglot promotion moves
* A bug when adding a new engine to an existing tour but not update it to the engine list

Some small improvements/adjustments such as displaying tbhits inside the table

New features:
* Auto-create backup files for playing tournaments (starts from banksiaplaying.json.bk.1)
* Graphs: new types: dot, bar; new graphs for depth, nodes, speed, elapsed time. All are select from Settings
* Engine buttons: replaced buttons (defined by engines’ options) by combo box (dropbox) to save space and display text fully
* Extreme Chess Analysis (ECA): a lot of work done to make it become much more stable, reliable, and useable, from finding, fixing bugs to adding new features and functions: display board on left/right side or use big board; backup/restore files managing; merge; info/delete branches; export trees to opening books (PGN, EPD, Polyglot formats); show branch’s heights; more stats…



Fig. 1 New features: more graph types and graphs; drop box for engine buttons


Fig. 2 An ECA tree image

[AdminX]

Impressive!

[AlexChess]

Thank you, just installed!

Whats is the meaning of: Starts from banksiaplaying.json.bk.1 ?
How can I backup my 841/903 games still not present on Recent Tournaments, to restart using Banksiagui adding and updating
more engines?

Thank you very much, I like your wonderful GUI! (I'm translating menus to Italian )

Regards, AlexChess

[phhnguyen]

Thank you, just installed!

Whats is the meaning of: Starts from banksiaplaying.json.bk.1 ?
How can I backup my 841/903 games still not present on Recent Tournaments, to restart using Banksiagui adding and updating
more engines?

Thank you very much, I like your wonderful GUI! (I'm translating menus to Italian )

Regards, AlexChess

Whenever BSG writing down the current tournament (to the file banksiaguiplaying.json in the configuration folder) it creates several backup files for previous writings. The oldest one is saved as banksiaplaying.json.bk.5 and so on to the second-latest one banksiaplaying.json.bk.1 (the current one is stored as banksiaplaying.json). Those files are not the same but different a bit because they are created in different moments when the tournament is playing. If the current one is broken, the user can use any of the backup files thus he can minimize the loss.

The above files are created automatically. The user can backup manually too, via the function Duplicate in the Recent tournament dialog box. Just do that frequently to save precious data.

I may add more ways to backup/restore is coming versions. If anyone has suggestions, all are welcome.

[AlexChess]

Wow!
I have removed the old tournaments, pressed New tournaments, and finally I have a backup of my last big tournament and I can continue the games from here. When you select it and press + (duplicate) does it makes 1 more clone? Because nothing apparenttly happens.



PS: I have added up to 47 engines, but the messagebox always says: "added 41 new games" (should be 44-45-46) is only a glitch?

Thank you!

AlexChess

[AdminX]

The Extreme Analysis looks really useful.

[CMCanavessi]

Version 0.47 beta released


Fixed bugs:
* A bug on pondering for engines

Terrific release! Can you comment on the pondering bug? What was it?

Also, when running a tournament, when does Banksia "saves" progress? After every match? At certain intervals? How does that work?