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Topic: Chat room 2010 development and tests (Read 4463 times) |
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Hippo
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #15 on: Jul 1st, 2010, 1:15pm » |
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I can imagine one coordinator manipulating the shared board and others questioning/suggesting moves. It is hard for me to imagine the shared manipulation of the board. May be 2 boards would be helpful ... one for coordinator, one for suggestions ...
I don't want to complicate things, but it may be useful to think about two/multiple boards from he start. Extreme case would be tiny board for each other chatter and copy feature, but it is probably completely different solution.
I can imagine watch feature ... automatically copying given person's board. And not displaying tiny boards in watch mode.
Edit of the board in watch mode stops the watch mode ... having stack of say 3 saved positions is another possible complication.
OK let me stop now  I think any shared board would be big improvement and i's better to have working code than a long to do list.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #16 on: Jul 1st, 2010, 2:51pm » |
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on Jul 1st, 2010, 1:15pm, Hippo wrote:| It is hard for me to imagine the shared manipulation of the board. |
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Then don't imagine it. Instead imagine that the people in the chat room work out some way to take turns, and imagine that they could enforce not stepping on each other's toes by some social means rather than you enforcing it by some technical means.
Quote:| I don't want to complicate things |
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Then don't. 
Quote:| OK let me stop now I think any shared board would be big improvement and i's better to have working code than a long to do list. |
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Whew! I'm glad you talked yourself off the ledge.
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FireBorn
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #17 on: Jul 1st, 2010, 3:18pm » |
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If necessary, I think allowing only one player to have control of the board at a time would help. You would just need some commands like these:
/give <user> - gives the board to a user
/give - makes the board "unowned" (free to take)
/take - takes a free board
And if people are being stupid and not giving boards back to the main commentator, these commands may be handy:
/lend <user> - lends the board to a user temporarily
/take - takes back a lent board
A user that has not used the board in 5 minutes or so gives the board up.
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Sconibulus
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #18 on: Jul 1st, 2010, 3:29pm » |
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I'd really like the ability to spawn multiple boards, if at all possible, and tab between them. This would give people a few more options if multiple wanted to show moves at once, but, more importantly, would allow commentators for two different games to have persistent boards to work with, rather than having to swap off completely recreating the position each time.
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leo
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #19 on: Jul 10th, 2010, 11:42am » |
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@Omar: Using sockets would really be the ideal solution. I should be able to install a socket daemon on my new server for the time of the development. I'll email you soon about the technical details. Thanks!
Regarding the possibility of having multiple boards: It's relatively easy to code and I've been thinking of it but without implementing it yet, because I feared I would clutter the interface with tons of controls. I trust that we'll find good ergonomic solutions as we beta test though. I plan to upload an update during next week, or tomorrow if I'm valiant enough ^^
Regarding a controled access to the board(s), it's also quite feasable but for the moment I'm with Fritzlein thinking that we can first trust people to self manage the queue. Some testing will tell if it works.
Thank you all for the feedback and ideas, keep them coming.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 10th, 2010, 11:46am by leo » |
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Nombril
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #20 on: Aug 12th, 2010, 9:53pm » |
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I'm wondering if "Your Local Time" can be integrated to chat room messages. I've noticed a few times when people try to plan for a future game that it is sometimes a bit complicated to make sure everyone is on the same clock. So, for example, you could type "How about 20:00YLT" and the message that appears on each user's screen would be converted to their local times.
Of course, this could lead to confusion if 20:00YLT is converted and 20:00 YLT isn't converted.
If it is tough or impossible to put in the actual text, maybe a converter between YLT to/from GMT on the side would be helpful.
I just moved time zones, so am probably having more problems with time zone conversions than usual  so maybe this wouldn't be worth the effort if noone else is getting confused by scheduling with someone in another time zone.
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Hippo
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #21 on: Aug 13th, 2010, 2:29am » |
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I am trying not use time describtion relative to my time but relative in general ... after 3 hours ... not at evening, but not all users did it as well.
But <ylt>14:45</ylt> would be nice if seen converted on the other side. (And denoted as converted.)
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leo
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #22 on: Aug 15th, 2010, 4:06pm » |
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That's a very cool idea, Nombril. The sender's client can convert from the local time to GMT/UTC upon sending the message to the server, the server stores the time in UTC, then each receiver's client converts to their local time. As Hippo says, the result should be signaled as converted to help prevent misunderstandings. Imagine someone writes "The tournament starts on Saturday at MLT:2300" and someone in a time zone two notches eastwards reads "The tournament starts on Saturday at YLT:0100" instead of "Sunday at YLT:0100" :/ Maybe it would be better to read something like "The tournament starts on Saturday at 2300+08 <<<0100YLT>>>". Or allow to work with timestamps instead of just times. Definitely a useful tool in my opinion as I'm arithmetically arthritic.
I hoped to have the new chatroom and shared board ready for the online Festival, but I'm very -very- late in the development for various causes, so I'm starting to consider developing the shared board as an isolated web app that will work with the current chat room, while the new chatroom will be ready when it is, and we'll have more time to discuss the necessary features. What do you think?
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Fritzlein
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #23 on: Aug 16th, 2010, 3:37am » |
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on Aug 15th, 2010, 4:06pm, leo wrote:| I hoped to have the new chatroom and shared board ready for the online Festival, but I'm very -very- late in the development for various causes, so I'm starting to consider developing the shared board as an isolated web app that will work with the current chat room, while the new chatroom will be ready when it is, and we'll have more time to discuss the necessary features. What do you think? |
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I understand that your coding efforts are purely a volunteer donation to the community and as such are subject to many preemptions. I hope you aren't feeling bad for not having donated more sooner. Anything you can do now or later is a gift for which we are grateful.
I have thought again about my scheduled strategy workshop. If there is no communal analysis board, I will simply cancel the workshop. Talking about a position without being able to play out and take back variations on the board would be somewhere between frustrating and futile. As far as scheduling goes, though, it would be good to have a working tool at least a week beforehand so that there is no danger of a last-minute cancellation and a big hole in the schedule which could be taken up by some other event given a bit of advance warning.
A strategy workshop needs a board that everyone can see, on which I can enter moves and take them back arbitrarily. (The nested takeback function of 0/0/0/0/0 time control games in the gameroom didn't work last time I tried it; otherwise I could just play a game against myself.) It is not necessary for this communal board to be integrated in the chat room, or to have permissions restricting who can and can't make moves, or to allow more than one person to use it, etc.
I understand that even a feature-stripped analysis board is a non-trivial piece of code. If you can't get it done in the next eighteen days, no problem, we can simply take the workshop off the schedule and celebrate in some other way.
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leo
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Re: Chat room 2010 development and tests
« Reply #24 on: Aug 17th, 2010, 5:31pm » |
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Thanks Fritzlein. Somehow I still hope I can make it all, chat room and board, for August 31, because of my unpredictable jump-and-burst ways. But I must also acknowledge that I'm in a deep trough of wave, so the alternate solution of using a web based desktop sharing that's being discussed in the Festival thread is a very wise one.
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