Development

[Bodia]

Hi guys,
I have discovered Raptor lately and it instantly became my primary
FICS client. And I also want to contribute. Are there any planned
features to implement or known bugs, can anybody outline it so I'd
know where to start from?

Bogdan (Bodia on FICS)

[cday]

There are lots of things you can do. The question really is what do
you wan to work on. I noticed you have done some open source work on a
chess server big plus. Here are some of the bigger features I was
planning on adding. Below is also a list of smaller things that are
needed if you want to start out that first. Just let me know what you
want to work on and what gmail address you want to use and I will add
you to the project.

Features:
Debian package for linux installs.
Analysis generation of a chess game with a configured UCI engine in
pgn.
Docking/Undocking the internal raptor windows.
Internationalization.
Storing off bughouse games in bgpn format.
Variants fics doesnt support i.e. chinese chess,capablanca chess,
shogi, etc (both gui and a protocol needs to be designed/developed).
Timeseal2 support for fics.
Develop in a type of script that can be plugged into the aliases.
PGN bug fixes.
PGN annotator (support for comments,NAG,sublines).
Restful web-service integration with www.ficsgames.com. (provide a
rich client to lookup games/do positional search).
Support to play a configured UCI engine inside raptor.
Support to export a pgn game to fics in examine mode to show others.

Bugs/Minor Enhancements needed:
Being able to configure colors in seek graph.
Extended support for the new zoom feature. Would be nice to get it
working in the internal browser. Seems like you can if the browser is
an NSBrowser in swt.
Tons of small issues in different environments...
Linux table refreshing isnt restoring the selected rows.
Windows sometimes (its rare) when you capture you see a strange
effect with the piece shadows.
Linux movelist cursor isnt working well, it ignores key events
and in some versions when you select a move it doesnt repaint
properly.
Find a way to speed up the interface when the fics console
contains lots of text. Possibly look at writing a model backed by a
file instead of memory for the StyledText.
More chess board layouts types.
More move list types.
Fixing some of the subtle issues in the svg chess sets.

CDay

[Bodia]

Analysis generation of a pgn game is very interesting. But the issues of
movelist cursor in Linux bother me as well, will look on it first. You
may add me to the project just after I'll get some results.

Bodia

[Carson Day]

Ok if you need any help setting it up in eclipse or in how the app works let me know.

Carson

[Bodia]

The Issue 421 was partially fixed. It was due to a different selection
mechanism GTK uses. There were also unpleasant glitches in movelist when
iterating though the game backward in Linux. This was corrected by
introducing the custom selection that highlights selected cells with
color. I cannot figure out how to set a focus on the active move though,
but anyway it looks much better than before. At least one OS (Windows
XP) seemed not benefit from that change, so it applies only to linuxes.

I'll also look at Issue 232 and consider creating additional
textarea-like moves list widget.

P.S Are there any instructions on commiting after you'll add me?

Bodia

[cday]

Just basic development guidelines on committing. It is pretty relaxed.
I have listed them all here:
http://code.google.com/p/raptor-chess-interface/wiki/DevelopmentGuidelines.

Yeah I have battled with that before. For some reason the TableCursor
in RaptorTable does'nt work well in GTK as you mentioned. Cool more
move list widgets would be nice. If you want to change the ChessBoard
to locate them in different areas other than just on the right we can
do that as well just let me know.

You can message me your email address on fics if you like instead of
posting it to the group here.