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chaitu236
Feature Request: Load PTN
The current loader function loads TPS, but the output for downloading notations is PTN. Neither the file, nor the PTN-String can be correctly parsed by the parsing function.
Suggestion: Relable 'Load TPS' into 'Load Log' and accept both TPS and PTN strings. Also, a file dragged into the string field should be loaded, so the user does not have to manually open the file to load it. A 'Select PTN file' button in the loading modal is also possible.
I like the idea of making Load flexible to recognize either notation and load as appropriate.
I can work on that.
Of course, the real value would be to let you reload a TPS (or PTN) into an ON-LINE game, and resume play at that point.
Scenario: two people are playing a beautiful game and one of them needs to leave for a while. They don't want to abandon the game, so they download a TPS or PTN. Then when they are ready to resume, one of them creates a New Game, their opponent joins the game, and then one of them does a Reload of the saved file and it gets pushed to the other player and play resumes.
I don't plan to make any enhancements to the server code, or the client-server protocol. So someone else will have to work on supporting resume of an on-line game.
I would wait with that kind of change until chaitu finished his semester (it's just a few days now). He will probably give new directions for playtak anyway. Maybe he will tell us that he plans for profiles and user-interaction. Then loading a game could actually be a much different process alltogether.
The idea of being able to load a PTN to review a game locally would be nice. But I think resuming an online game from PTN isn't such a good idea because it'd require changes to UI most of which would be non-intuitive.
I think correspondence games, being able to add time to opponents' clock and games with time increment after every move would make this unnecessary anyway.
I agree. The core feature would be restoring the saved PTN, since that is the output format downloaded after a game. To resume previous games seems a feature for when the platform is further advanced. It would also allow to 'branch' games by playing from a specific game state, but in a different direction. This would give a lot of interesting information on game states. But again - Feature for another day...
Does a correspondence game mean that the server will be able to maintain game state indefinitely and that a player will be able to reconnect back into that game at any point later. Or is that not what you are thinking of?
I thought about writing a quick-and-dirty PTN parser which would output a TPS string, optionally up to a certain play state. This would obviously not solve the mentioned problems regarding time and game state, but it might be a start. Anyone interested?
hmm... from the standpoint that during the weekend I (assumably) will work a great deal on my client anyway (first to catch up with the master, then to do some long intended upgrades) I can probably go about writing an actual PTN parser that retains the steps. Would be a bit wasteful to invest any work in a quick fix. Also knowing kakaburra (a bit), quick (and dirty) solutions are not his style.
That is probably correct. I'll do the reasonable thing and familiarize myself with the existing client codebase. Maybe I can find some other things to contribute.
Be aware, that Chaitu plans to modularize index.html which currently holds most functionality server side. Things might shift a bit before they settle somewhere. Also a similar refactoring is planned for the server, though I do not know how immediate he plans to do that.
I'll keep that in mind. Getting to know the style can't be wrong, though. Thank you, TreffnonX.