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KGS Wishlist / Technical
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8. Technical/Other/Dunnos

[81] Development Fundamentals
[82] Connection and Responsiveness
[83] Other Technical Issues

[81] Discussion of Development Fundamentals

  • Jochie: Is it possible to synchronise the ".cgoban2rc" file (or whatever it is on non-Unix systems) immediately instead of waiting until the program exits? [Or possibly hourly or anytime something changes, like a player is buddied, or a window size changed] I have kept it running for days if not weeks and would hate to lose changes to buddy lists and such if it crashed. +
  • Jochie: Any reason not to use an text based configuration file? Hu: Text based, yes please! Or at least editable buddy lists to prune out deadwood of defunct accounts, +
  • SirLyric: Other open ports besides the standard KGS (2379, I believe) to ease the way through firewalls. Suggest 21, 22, 23? For an example, many AOL Instant Messenger clones do exactly this because AIM's server listens on every port.
  • juhtolv: Please, release specs and documentation of the protocol of KGS. It would be nice, if the KGS-client (CGoban2) and maybe even the KGS server was free software (also known as open source software). If you release at least specs and documentation of the KGS protocol, then other people can create free KGS clients as they want. In addition they could use any language and widget sets they want and we would not be bound to the virtual machine language called Java anymore. In the other words: KGS clients could be made even in compiled languages like C/C++ and those clients would be really fast. And if they don't like the GUI of CGoban2, they could create a GUI that fits better for their taste. But I do not want to pressure you; if I recall, you have promised to release at least the protocol, when it is stabilized enough. Hmmm... What if NNGS would implement the IGSCP protocol? That would be interesting.
    • BaBoUnD?: You might regard this as a mere point of semantics, but I'd like to point out that free software != open-source. In fact, KGS is already "free", meaning it costs nothing. But it is not open-source. Which, I hasten to add, is not necessarily a bad thing.
  • juhtolv: If you release CGoban2 as free software, then it would be nice, if it was possible to run it under free Java implementations (Kaffe, SableVM, [ext] GNU Classpath, GCJ etc.).
    • Hu: Please read the explanations elsewhere at Sensei's Library why the protocol specification and code for CGoban2 and KGS will not be released anytime soon. This issue has been discussed extensively and somewhat exhaustively.
  • I'd like an XML-RPC interface (or something similar) to cgoban for polling data - specificly data about my challanges. I use a multiworkspace desktop, and if I change workspace while waiting I'd like to have an applet for warning me if someone accepted it (and perhaps who, beeing able to accept/decline from the applet would also be desirable but not necessary). It would be great if things like this could be done through some sort of RPC since the client can't possibly support all desktopsystems - let other people help if they'd like this feature.

[82] Connection and Responsiveness

  • Allow a reconnect from the main window. Instead of greying out the "Play on KGS" button, ask if the user wants to force a reconnect. +
  • Don't close all watched games that when it disconnects for inactivity. [Something like this has been implemented. Would like to be able to use scroll bars to read chats after disconnect.]
  • When disconnecting for inactivity, why not give an option to reconnect to the server instead of closing the client ?
  • Easier ways to rejoin a game when returning from being disconnected. +?
  • Upon disconnection, provide a better reason than "KGS is refusing connections".
  • Possibility to disable idle disconnect (for frequent users). +?
  • Maybe it is possible to let CGoban connect through a http proxy server? This way many people behind restrictive firewalls could play go at work ;) or at university.

[83] Other Technical Issues

  • Hu: Have a way to force Garbage Collection (Java internal issue). At least have the New Game dialogue or challenging an offer cause it to occur so that it does not happen right when you accept a game and the clock is ticking. +
    • crux: Are you sure it's the garbage collection and not network lags you are seeing?
    • Hu: Yes. My computer has a disk activity light and makes disk noises. When network lag occurs there is none of that.
    • Evand: Hu, it may be possible to do this externally without wms doing anything. Does this matter enough that it would be worth my time to attempt? It should actually be reasonably simple, but would be easier with the source available, obviously
  • Nixihou: I would like to have a more powerful print option for games and sgf-files. Currently I miss the possibilities to define how many moves to display on the first diagram (e.g. 1-50 numbered) and how many additional moves for each following diagram until the end of game. And the possibility to say how many go-diagrams on one page. (and with or without the moverange as legend of the diagram, and a checkbox to print the game-informations etc. Many more printing features would be "nice to have".)
    • rmsp: Second that. It would be nice to be able to print with captured stones, kos, etc. displayed underneath the diagram, i.e. B42 at B12
    • (Sebastian:) I disagree. There is an easy workaround - just invest a few dollars in commercial Go software, which does a much better job at this than CGoban2 ever can. There are many requests here for which there is no workaround - why reinvent the wheel, when there's so much else that only KGS can do?
  • rubilia: Not sure, if this is the right place here, and, since I don't know anything serious about Java at all, this question may sound silly. Anyway: (How) can I run cgoban editing a sgf file from the command line? I'd like to make cgoban my standard sgf editor for being able to "click and see" any sgf file link I find on the web.
    • glue: Use the -nosplash -edit file.sgf option.
    • rubilia: Sorry, I didn't mention, currently I use to start CGoban2 with Java WebStart? (at a win9x system): "C:\Programme\Java Web Start\javaws.exe" "@C:\Programme\Java Web Start\.javaws\cache\indirect\indirect49789.ind". The indirect49789.ind file points to another local file which contains about 15 XML lines. Does the javaws command support any switches/options at all?
    • wms: Nope. Java web start ignores all command line arguments other than the address of the JNLP file. This is the only reason that I still keep the other launchers around. Sun has indicated that Java 1.5's web start will let you associate MIME types with your application, but I haven't yet had a chance to dig around in the 1.5 beta and find out for sure. If it does, you can expect me to start deprecating the non-web start forms or cgoban 2!
    • Neil: And what software is required for this "web start" to work?
    • wms: Java. If you have Java 1.4 or later, you have Java web start. It is much more reliable than other systems for starting up CGoban 2, the only reason I keep other systems around is because it can't (yet) associate SGF files with the application. Hopefully that will change in the next release.
    • Neil: I thought it might be some third party thing, but that must be something that only exists on the select platforms that Sun deigns to support, because it's not here on FreeBSD with JDK 1.4.1. Thanks for your answer.
    • wms: Are you sure? My understanding is that Java web start is now part of Java, and that's that. It is there for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X - and OS X is not one of the ones that Sun supports, so obviously it does exist outside of the Sun-developed versions of Java. If you're right then it pretty much sucks to be FreeBSD if you want Java I guess. The good news is, if you don't have Java web start, it still isn't hard to run the program. Java web start is really just a system for downloading, running, and cacheing the .jar file. Since the downloading part is done via HTTP, if you for some reason don't have Java web start, you can always just download it yourself and write a shell script with "java -jar ..." in it.
    • Neil: I'm perfectly sure it's not here, and in fact I've found a FreeBSD Problem Report that proposes the addition of a web start service. It's good to know that the software will be available without it, though. I'm comfortable with the software the way it runs now.
  • Support for esound as audio output (enable sound that is mixable on Linux (among others)). +
  • Separate volume control for CGoban2's own sounds. +
  • jab: Some kind of memory effective thread handling. For example if I start CGoban2 and open three SGF files via the edit button I will have one main thread and many children, but if I open five SGF files via the web browser I will have 5 JVM's taking quite a bit of my 128MB away. I saw that, for example, Acrobat under Linux recognizes if a main instance is running already and then probably just connects via a well known socket to issue an open/edit file command. Maybe that is not too much effort to implement for CGoban2? I guess it would help CGoban2 users with old PCs.
    • mgoetze: This is a problem with (a) your operating system, (b) your JVM or (c) your interpretation of certain numbers, and I'm betting on (c)...
      • jab: I would appreciate it if your reply would be more constructive rather than plain assuming I am to dumb to interprete the numbers. Maybe you give it a own go at the KGS Client Memory Consumption Page. And if you agree with me there, I would suggest we delete this sidetalk from senseis as it is not beneficial.
  • BramGo: I have a remark about the GTP protocol implemented by KGS. I'm wondering, is it possible to add some chat commands to the current implemented GTP-commands. I know, the GTP protocol does not contain any commands for chatting. But GTP was not created for a chat environment. Since we are using it in a chat environment, it would be nice to be able to let the bots respond to what is being said during the game. This could give bots enormous possibilities. They would be able to interact with the room and respond to certain commands. This would open a new range of possibilities like Joseki and Fuseki dictionaries, public voting for moves (educational form of rengo), chat-keywords to change the strength of playing, problemset-bots for practice of tsumego, ....


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This is a copy of the living page "KGS Wishlist / Technical" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.