Scatha 0.2.4

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

My hexagonal chess program Scatha is now updated to version 0.2.4.

Because of a limitation in the nice but somewhat unfinished development tools I use to create Scatha's GUI, version 0.2.4 will only work in OS X 10.4.1. It will not work in 10.4.0, and it will almost certainly not work in 10.4.2. I'll release a 10.4.2 compatible version shortly after 10.4.2 is released.

There is nothing new in the GUI, only the engine is changed. It should be a tiny bit stronger now. Early tests with Glaurung, Scatha's twin program for classical chess, indicate an improvement of about 30 Elo points. Otherwise the only noticable change is 0.2.4 is compatible with OS X 10.4.1, while 0.2.3 was only compatible with 10.4.0.

The total lack of complaints that Scatha 0.2.3 did not work in Mac OS X 10.4.1 is rather alarming. It makes me suspect that I am the only person who actually uses Scatha.

The program and source code (only for the chess engine so far)
can be downloaded here.

Tord

[Alessandro Scotti]

Because of a limitation in the nice but somewhat unfinished development tools I use to create Scatha's GUI, version 0.2.4 will only work in OS X 10.4.1.

Hi Tord,
what tools are you using? For portability, Qt and Java seem both interesting...

[Tord Romstad]

Hi Alessandro!

Because of a limitation in the nice but somewhat unfinished development tools I use to create Scatha's GUI, version 0.2.4 will only work in OS X 10.4.1.

Hi Tord,
what tools are you using?

I use OpenMCL, which includes excellent bindings to Apple's Cocoa toolkit. GUI programming has never been so easy and fun. There are only two disadvantages: The fact that OpenMCL Cocoa applications only work in the exact OS X version in which they are compiled, and that there will probably never be a version of OpenMCL which runs on Intel Macs. The first problem isn't really unsurmountable. A solution I have thought about is to make the program check the OS version during startup (before the GUI is launched), and recompile itself from source when it discovers that the OS version has changed. The second problem is worse. More about this below.

For portability, Qt and Java seem both interesting...

They do, but they don't produce GUIs with a native look and feel in Mac OS X (Java does if I use it with the Cocoa toolkit, of course, but then the advantage of portability disappears). Besides, they are both far too low-level for my taste. The main disadvantage of having used Common Lisp extensively is that I always feel crippled and disgusted when forced to work in more mainstream languages.

Because of the problem with future Intel Macs and OpenMCL, however, I will probably have to rewrite my GUI some time soon. In principle, I would prefer to use Xanalys LispWorks, but the price tag of 1100 Euros is a bit too big for me at the moment. This means that I will have to use something else than Lisp. I will probably end up using Cocoa with Objective-C (which in my opinion is a much cleaner and more elegant object oriented extension of C than C++ and Java). This also ensures at least some amount of portability: I should be able to port my program to Linux with the GNUStep toolkit.

Tord