[Retros] A new program to solve fairy proof games

[François Labelle]

Hi Allan,

It looks like you sent your message to the list by mistake. I'm replying 
to the list in case people who have read your message are interested in 
the answers.

> In Demolition Mode it would be useful, especially for longer PGs, to 
> have a further option to specify the most likely opening moves, after 
> which the passes would begin.  It would artificially shorten a 
> problem and risk missing cooks that begin early, but such a facility 
> would help to find later transpositions/cooks more quickly.

How about you solve a separate "a=>b" stipulation for each sequence of 
opening moves that you want to try? There is an example on the welcome 
page. In your case it could look like this:

forsyth rsbqkbs1/ppppppp1/7r/7p/P7/R7/1PPPPPPP/1SBQKBSR
option InitialMoveNumber 3
stip a=>b6.5 forsyth ...

(The option InitialMoveNumber is purely cosmetic.) Alternatively, the 
chaining functionality might be better than a=>b as it will include the 
opening moves in the solution:

stip dia2.0 forsyth rsbqkbs1/ppppppp1/7r/7p/P7/R7/1PPPPPPP/1SBQKBSR
stip dia6.5 forsyth ...

It also lets you use the option AddPieces to have something more humanly 
readable:

stip dia2.0 pieces white Pa4 Ra3 black Ph5 Rh6 AddPieces
stip dia6.5 forsyth ...

The drawback of these last two solutions is that the progress percent 
will be less interesting. All three solutions should be compatible with 
Demolition Mode.

> Is it possible to have a "Store and Stop / Recall and Continue" 
> facility the way Jacobi runs?   One could then close Jacobi and resume 
> a long test later.  It would also be useful to back 
> up current progress periodically to avoid needing to start over 
> if solving is interrupted by an unexpected shut down (see below).

Yes, I plan to offer this facility eventually.

> Finally, a graphic interface to input positions would be useful when 
> you can add it.  I use iNatch which, in the version I use, gives you 
> the forsyth from the diagram, but with N instead of S -- hence my 
> desire to have Jacobi accept N as input even though it can output S).

Jacobi supports 4 language commands that you can put at the top of your 
problem:

BeginProblem (default)
DebutProbleme
AnfangProblem
EnglishN

They determine the language of the forsyth and pieces. To use N instead 
of S, I hope it's not too much effort to start your problem description 
with the word "eng" (a shorter prefix like "e" or "en" is ambiguous with 
the command "EndProblem").

> I have been having trouble with crashes testing a Circe PG.

I've gotten "Aw, Snap!" errors in Chrome too when running overnight. 
Believe it or not, "Aw, Snap!" means that there is a bug in Chrome, not 
in Jacobi! If you want this fixed, then theoretically you need to send 
the bug report to the Chrome team. If you don't, then they'll probably 
eventually find the bug on their own, so there's hope for a fix each 
time Chrome is updated. It's not clear if it's a bug which is triggered 
with very small probability, or if it's triggered only after running for 
a long time. Meanwhile I haven't seen this problem in Firefox.

     François