Re: [XBoard-devel] beta version

[h.g. muller]

At 00:34 14-7-2009 -0600, Eric Mullins wrote:
> There's 2 things I'd like to see before we release:
>
> 1) Instead of having a jaws and non-jaws binaries, I'd like to have just 
> one that does JAWS if it finds the jaws dll, otherwise behaving 
> regularly.  I mentioned this to HGM in a private email, but haven't heard 
> back.  I can do this fairly quickly though.

I was still thinking about this one, but the more I think about it the less 
desirable it seems.
The JAWS code is very specialized, and interferes with the normal logic of 
the program
by suppressing some focus switches. Even making that of the JAWS code 
conditional
on a run-time switch would confuse future programmers as to how things are 
supposed
to work.

I consider it a good thing that the JAWS version refuses to work if the 
jfwapi32.dll is not
present. People that downoad it by mistake will immediately discover their 
error, and
people that loaded in intentionally will not be confused as to why their 
supposedly speaking
version does not speak when they happen to have jfwapi32.dll not in the 
right place.

We can question it if we should offer a download for the JAWS binary at 
all. Perhaps
we should leave that for specialized websites.

> 2) create a small gui-script to act as a startup dialog for xboard.
> This I don't know how to do, but someone else might, and it can't be that 
> hard.  Basically something that works like winetricks if you've ever seen 
> that in action.

I am not sure about this either. How do you envision this script to be 
used? Should it
go in usr/games in stead of the xboard binary, so that people, when they 
give the command
"xboard" start up the script rather than the executable? Should the menu 
items that are
installed refer to it?

I agree that XBoard does not yet behave at all like a user-friendly program 
at all.
But remedying this with a script is tantamount to distributing the code of 
XBoard
over two levels, of different implementation. If we really want this 
behavior we should
program this into XBoard, and not go to a hybrid implementation of scripts 
and C code.
That is a kludge that people would employ because they have no access to 
the source
code.

I could add to that that I think the WinBoard startup dialog is an 
abomination. It is very
bad to have features that can only be selected at startup time. There is no 
reason at all
why people should not be allowed to switch engine without restarting. The 
engine choice
should happen in the normal menus, not in some startup dialog. Eliminating 
the startup
menu is definitely an item on my to-do list.