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gnubg redheaded step child?

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Saturday, 7 June 2014, at 7:06 p.m.

In Response To: gnubg redheaded step child? (Taper_Mike)

Taper_Mike wrote:

I would also add that the user interface in XG is better than GnuBg's.

I haven't found this to be the case. They both have their nice features and their annoyances. In particular there is one persistent but not-quite-reproducible bug in XG's user interface that I find very annoying. Typically when I analyze a match, I open up two copies of XG. One has the match in it. The other is in "Setup position" mode. What I spend a large percentage of my XG time on is this:

1. In the match, find an error or an otherwise interesting decision. Type Ctrl-Shift-C to copy the XGID.

2. Go to the other instance of XG and paste the ID.

3. Click on "Unlimited" to switch to an unlimited game to see what the decision looks like there.

I'd say that about 85% to 90% of the time, this works just fine. But 10% to 15% of the time, the radio button for unlimited registers, but the setting actually remains on match play. The only visual hint is that at the top and bottom of the board, the score has not changed (even though the score in the panel below has been replaced with "Jacoby" and "Beaver"). When you ask for an evaluation, it gives you the match play evaluation. The only way I've been able to circumvent this effect is to save the position and re-open from disk. The reloaded file will then revert to match play. Now when I click on "unlimited" it really will be unlimited.

10% of the time might not seem like a big deal but if you do this thousands of times, as I have, it gets annoying. I've reported the bug to Xavier and he knows about it but as far as I know has not been able to fix it. The fact that it doesn't seem to be reproducible on demand is undoubtedly an obstacle.

There is a "dual" bug that sometimes appears. Suppose I don't switch to unlimited but save the position as a match play decision. Again, some percentage of the time, the act of saving the position will cause the position to switch to unlimited spontaneously, wiping the match-play analysis from the screen.

GnuBg also has a few features that XG does not, for example, the EPC estimator under Race Theory.

By far the most important GNU feature in my opinion is its "View Statistics" button that gives you information about how many rollout trials terminated with the cube at what level, as well as other interesting statistics.

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