Recent changes to feature-requests

MAC version

2009-12-30T20:47:41Z

When does come a version füe MAC OS 10.5 / 10.6 as *.dmg?

Clear board command for dgtnixVirtualBoard

2007-02-15T18:50:00Z

Add a clear board command to the virtual board. Eventually also add a "initial position" command.

dlopen loading of pthread library

2007-02-06T14:14:58Z

This has to be discussed, but a common mistake is, if dgtnix is opened with dlopen(), to forgot to link the engine with -lpthread, then the link error only pop at execution time !

A way to prevent this would be to dlopen the pthread lib in dgtnix itself and I don't see any drawback of this approach.

Improve dgtnixVirtualBoard (2)

2007-02-06T14:10:36Z

make dgtnixVirtualBoard aware of the engine deconnection . In practice, on just have to check if the socket is still connected, however, the virtual board spend the most of it's time in sys.readLine() so a think that this would require a simple thread that do the isConnected() testing.

Improve dgtnixVirtualBoard (1)

2007-02-06T14:08:30Z

Improve the virtual board with :
+add clock commands and message (sent every 500ms):
+start clock : s/wt/bt ( start clock with /wtime/blacktime )
+push clock button : p or push
+sleep <time> : z <time>

Get EPROM data

2007-02-06T14:05:22Z

Ability to fetch the EEPROM data from the board with a dgtnix function.

Proposition: the dgtnixQueryString() function could fetch the data, a small third party program could then convert the unformated string to PGN or other.

Set message on the clock

2007-02-06T14:03:12Z

Add a dgtnix function to display a message on the clock.

The prototype of the function is not well defined yet, but it will probably begins by dgtnix :)

proposal :

dgtnixSetClockMessage(const char *message)

The problem here is to decide if the user has to know the needed string format. And if not, how to cleanly convert a normal string to a clock string.

x-like event generation

2007-02-06T14:00:39Z

this approach was proposed by Qutey, instead of parsing chars in
the file descriptor,
these functions will be added :
+ int dgtnixHasPendingEvent()
+ dgtnix_event_t dgtnixGetNextEvent()
+ int dgtnixGetFileDescriptor()

dgtnix_event_t is an union with a 'type' field, types of events are, for
the moment :
+ piece add
+ piece remove
+ time

in the case of a "piece add" or a "piece remove" event, the square and
piece are available as fields in the returned union. In case of a "time
event", the time left to the players and the current player flag are
available. The file descriptor is used only to do polling if needed (
i.e. select(...) ).

This mechanism is strongly inspired by the Xlib event management scheme.

We think that the main advantages are :
+ elegance
+ no more threading in the lib
+++> ease of use for the library user (who does not have to parse the FD
anymore)
+ reentrant functions, allowing multiple board to be connected to the PC

A priori, compatibility will be kept with good old time message parsing
on the FD.

missing configuration and installation

2007-01-23T18:26:58Z

dgtnix lacks a configuration process to allow setting an installation prefix, and an install target in its Makefile such that the good old

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install

works.

Distribution and ports packagers like having DESTDIR and --libdir settable, makes it easier for the package to be included in Linux distributions and BSD port collections.

Change the name of the qt dialog

2006-05-04T14:38:05Z

So that it is clearer that :
+it is not needed by the driver
+it is just another test program