TODO

$Id: TODO,v 1.302 2009/06/13 00:05:41 c_anthon Exp $

People's names next to entries in this file mean they intend to work on that
item soon.  Please contact them before working on related areas, to avoid
duplication of effort and to make sure our changes merge easily.

* Evaluations:
** Allow different settings (e.g. search ply, candidates, tolerance) for each
  position class.
** Add more evaluation classes.
*** Add a neural net to correct errors in BEAROFF1 class.
*** Classes for bearing off against contact, back games, containment
  positions, prime-vs-prime...
*** Consider meta-pi scheme for using output from multiple nets.
** Add another "eval"-like command that show the distribution of
  equities n rolls ahead.  SW does bar graphs of this stuff; Cam Trenor
  suggests alternative output.
** Create multiple threads to parallelise rollouts (and evaluations?) on
  multiprocessors.  Perhaps start remote processes? (Olivier Baur)
** Add more statistics for rollouts, e.g.
    number of turns on the bar, average number of forced moves
** Add Michael Zehr's method for cube variance reduction in money games.
** Add a cache for cubeful evaluations.
** Joseph has weights for small (5 hidden nodes) nets, which could be
  used for the internal evaluations of deep searches for a significant
  speed increase.  See FindBestMoveInEval() in eval.c from fibs2html.
** Consider making EvalEfficiency() more sophisticated.
** Save rollouts and evaluations in moverecords, e.g., a cubeless rollout 
  for a position.
** Movefilters:
*** accept=0, extra=0 is an illegal value!
*** Improve dialog
** Cube filters
*** similar to move filters (jth)

* Commands:
** Add interactive rollouts.
** Analyse games and matches.
*** Allow re-evaluating analysis with different settings, and rollouts.
*** Make sure cube analysis works for beavers.
*** Use the fComputed field in statcontext (make "show statistics ..."
  complain if not computed, disable the GTK menu items if not available).
*** Make sure analysis works with resignations.
*** Consider a way for analysis to mark _good_ moves (e.g. moves which are
  flagged as errors at 0-ply but turn out to be correct at higher plies).
*** Option "[X] update annotations if re-evaluated or rolled out", and
  update annotations if option is selected.
  Alternatively, update annotation if it's different from good/very good.
*** fix logic for determining whether a double is around too-good or double
  point.
*** Calculate "advantage" (i.e. luck-adjusted result): ppg in game stats
  for money; MWC in match stats for matches.  Save the results in pairwise
  player records. (gary)
** Finish saving positions and evaluations to databases.
** Finish supervised training, and allow people to submit training data via
  web.
** Allow resuming interrupted rollouts, and extending completed rollouts.
*** Allow saving rollouts -- see Jim Segrave's message at
<http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnubg/2003-01/msg00244.html> for
details.
*** An option to stop a rollout once the stderr error has reached some
    arbitrary threshold
*** Report equivalent number of games when using variance reduction
*** Aborted rollouts show the full number of games in outputs
*** Implement for rollouts the same heuristics used by ComputerTurn for 
   cube decisions
*** Predefined rollout settings
** Extend ParsePosition() to handle some sort of syntax like
  [8/5 6/5] (meaning the position after that move).  FIBS boardstyle 3 output
  might be nice, too.
** When rolling out multiple decisions, add p-values (a la the equity
  difference).
** Importing and exporting:
*** Add missing export formats (FIBS oldmoves, .sgg, .pos).
*** Make the .mat format identical to Jellyfish (things to check:
  beavers, resignations, "and the match"...)
*** Check drops, beavers, resignations, implement Crawford and Jacoby etc. in
  SGG importing.
*** Make option to output board only for, say, very bad moves.
*** Consider rewriting export engine into one XML exporter combined with
  a number of XSL stylesheets. HTML/XHTML and text is a normal XSL stylesheet,
  and PDF/PS/TeX export is XSL-FO.
*** Improve the LaTeX, PS and PDF output:
**** Add commands to change paper size, board magnification, and number of
  move candidates listed in analysis. (gary)
**** Show game and match statistics (if available) at end of game/match.
**** Allow some option for selecting which boards to print (see the
  "FG" SGF property).
** Tutor mode
*** save evaluation into pmr for doubles
*** Warn about erroneous resignations.
** Make the command functions return an int, instead of void; that way
  commands which use other commands can provide sensible error handling. (gary)
** Kit Woolsey suggests adding an option for truncated rollouts: when
  truncating at n plies, take the mean of the (n-1) and n ply results.
** The "play" command is broken in "load command" scripts.  Add subcommands
  like "play game", "play match" for finer control. (gary)

* TTY interface:
** Handle "list game" and "list match".  (oysteijo)
** Allow setting/editing commentary.
** Show take/drop analysis.
** Make DumpStatcontext work for money sessions.
** Make output*() functions wrap words, and pause before scrolling (as in
  gdb).

* X interface:
** Does anybody still use the old Xlib (Ext) interface any more?  If so,
  perhaps they are interested in maintaining it.  If not, maybe it should
  be deprecated and eventually removed (all the recent GUI effort has
  concentrated on the GTK interface anyway).

* GTK interface:
** Allow copy/paste and drag & drop of the board ID in the board window.
** Add a prompt and entry field to allow commands to be entered (replacing
  stdin).
** Disable the "stop" button when nothing is happening.
** Add option to exchange the dice after a single click move has been
  made.
** Make sure we apply GTK styles correctly: create a GtkRcStyle; set the
  background colour in the style and the flag indicating the background is
  set; call gtk_widget_modify_style; unref the style.  This makes sure the
  style will survive across theme changes.
** Make usage() show the GDK and GTK options, if appropriate.
** Allow the cube text colour and the border specular/shiny parameters to be 
  changed.
** Use a file selection widget for the socket in the player dialog.
** Would ShowList() look better if it used a text widget?  (Wait for
  GTK+ 2.0.)
** Enable and disable the take/drop/redouble/agree/decline etc. buttons
  and menu items when appropriate.
** Make some of the information below the board optional (suggested by Jeremie 
  Petit).  This might be possible with a vertical pane widget, but it would
  be nice if there was a way to forbid children from being given _more_ than
  their requested size.  This might require a subclass which overrides
  gtk_vpaned_motion and sets paned->min_position.
** Optionally merge the game record and annotation windows into one big
  paned window (suggested by Jeremie Petit).
** When a long string is displayed in the status bar, the main window
  grows to accommodate it -- not very pretty.  A Layout or Viewport widget
  might be able to fix this.  (Fixed under GTK+ 2.0.)
** Make GTKDumpStatcontext check psc->fMoves, psc->fDice and psc->fCube,
  and only output the relevant statistics.
** Make sure copy/paste works correctly everywhere.  See
  <http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.txt>.  (Wait for GTK+ 2.0.)
** The edges of the board should cast shadows.  Getting shadows on the
  board surface is fairly easy... getting shadows on the chequers is not.
** chequer movement
*** right-blick bearoff tray for bearing off 4 men
    Also, if "allow dragging to illegal points" is disabled right clicking
    on the bearoff tray will hit the chequer in the home board.
*** Problems with movement with dice 63, 42, or 21. 
   See <URL:http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnubg/2003-05/msg00055.html>
** Annotations: it's not possible to write to the annotation window while playing
** Redesign some of the GUI. See mails from Albert Silver and others.
** The "take" hint-widget is not used. Either use it, or alter the current
"double"-widget.
** Allow some way to specify long RNG seeds, and RNG parameters besides the
  seed (e.g. BBS modulus, user .so file) in the GUI.
** Make sure all the buttons in the game record window are also available
  as main menu commands.
** The sound setting options page isn't complete yet.
** Show player on roll on board, e.g., dice cup, arrow, or whatever
** Optionally show numbers based on who's on roll
** Show resignations on board. Currently we show a white cube with a number.
  Change this to showing, e.g., R1, or change to a white flag.
** the Race Theory window is way too large. Where does all that white space
  come from?
** Extend the Race Theory window with the output from "eval" for bearoff
  databases.
** Temperatur maps:
*** save window geometry
*** add Eval button/eval settings button (like in hint-dialog)
*** show difference histogram
*** export to html
*** show eval settings (i.e., remember eval settings)

** Dialogs:
*** Add buttons to the "help" window to look up the command in the manual,
  or execute it.  Also use gtk_label_set_markup style markup in the help
  window.
*** Make open/save/import/export dialogs larger to accommodate very long
  filenames *and* save the geometry)

** Deprecated functions:
  Once GTK+ 2.0 is released, remove references to the following deprecated
functions:
*** gdk_style_get_font
*** gdk_style_set_font
*** gdk_image_new_bitmap
*** GtkText
*** Save geometry for other windows: match statistics, hint, etc.

* Bugs:
** The erroneous commands "set player both" and "set player both evaluation"
  give poor error messages.  szSetCommand is not always set correctly, which
  leads to other bad errors (e.g. "set player 0 cubedecision rollout").
** "help load sfdkljsdlf" gives a poor error message.
** Check that calls to GTKUpdateAnnotations() are made where necessary
  (e.g. the "annotate" commands probably should, and "set output ...").
** The SGF loading (saving?) routines and CommandLoadCommands use
  stdio, which restarts system calls on signals.  This means TTY interrupts
  and the GTK `stop' button don't work. (gary)
** There's no way to see the annotation on the opening move using the
  TTY interface.  Changing ShowBoard() to display the starting position
  and then the annotation might work.
** The SGF lexer and parser are robust against illegal input, but the
  game reading functions in sgf.c are very fragile.  They need to be
  fixed to detect invalid saved games.
** CommandCopy() should complain (or copy a board initialised to the
  starting position) if no game is being played.
** If "set turn" has been used during a game (so a player has two
  consecutive moves), then export to .mat format saves it incorrectly.
** Analysis with rollouts crashes under GTK.  (There are problems with the
  rollout window -- do we really want a window in this case?)
** FIBS oldmoves format doesn't record how many points a resignation is
  for -- we should calculate it based on the score.
** "help next" (and "next <tab>") are incomplete.
** GtkTexi should try to load images from the same directory as the XML file.
** It is possible to give some commands (e.g. "roll", "play") while in edit
  mode, which messes things up.
** make rollout as initial position work correctly. Currently, you have to perform
  two rollouts (one with player 0 on roll, and another with player 1 on roll)
  and average the two results. Instead gnubg should automagically perform both 
  rollouts and do the averaging.
** the move number shown when exporting positions to text or html is -1
** the rollout window is a bit to small
** try to eliminate dependency on pstopng and friends
** settings analysis thresholds doesn't seem to work
   (see http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-gnubg/2002-October/001313.html)
  (This is working as designed.  The navigation commands are based on the
  annotations, which are not necessarily related to the analysis at all,
  e.g. if they were marked by a human.  Perhaps we could add more navigation
  commands which are derived directly from the analysis, which would give
  the behaviour the user seems to want, and allow us to implement David
  Montgomery's suggestion of allowing negative error thresholds.)
** ShowBoard always shows "resigns" message as the player on roll, but it
  might have been the opponent.
** There is an extra column in the GTK+ player record list.  I can't see
  anything wrong with the code -- perhaps it is a GTK+ bug?  (That list
  widget is obselete, so presumably the problem will go away when we move
  to GTK+ 2.0.)
** it's not possible to drag the opponents chequers back if the player
  regret the hit; e.g., play one chequer to but the opponent on the bar. 
  After this it's neither possible to drag the opponent's chequer back
  nor to drag your own chequer back.
  [2003-04-05: it's now possible to drag your own chequer back]
** when there is both a missed double and a chequer play error, gnubg skips 
  the chequer play error when browsing for marked decisions only

* Documentation:
** Complete the Texinfo manual.  Perhaps for now, only things that are
  unlikely to change should be documented.
** The GNU coding standards say: "Don't just tell the reader what each
  feature can do -- say what jobs it is good for, and show how to use it for
  those jobs.  Explain what is recommended usage, and what kinds of usage
  users should avoid."

* Miscellaneous:
** Add more to http://www.gnu.org/software/gnubg/... -- perhaps pages to
  submit training data, an online evaluator like Monte Carlo, maybe even an
  entire game like Motif.
** Submit something to <http://www.distributed.net/nextgen/projects.html>.
** Allow loading and saving weights to specify binary or ASCII format (perhaps
  load and save use binary, import and export use ASCII).
** Think about generating huge databases for CD-ROMs (we can get 1-sided
  databases for all chequers up to the 11 point, or 2-sided databases where
  both players have up to 11 chequers in the home board onto a CD-ROM).
** Add optional time rules, for tournament play when clocks are used.
** Add more optional feature tests to "make check" -- databases, X?
** Add import/export tests.
** Change the fConfirm ("are you sure you want to abort the game in
  progress") checks so that they _do_ ask when the game is over but the
  match is still in progress, and they _don't_ ask if a game has not been
  modified since it was last loaded/saved.
** Handle SGF variations.
** Allow loading/saving of compressed games/matches with zlib.
** Make the external player handle resignation decisions.
** Allow an option for illegal moves to be entered.
** Allow ~ and $ escapes in filenames (use wordexp()).
** Allow printing positions/games/matches/etc.  (More or less the same
  as exporting to PostScript, but piped to a printing process.) (gary)
*** Consider adding optional Ghostscript support -- Ghostscript can be
  built as a shared library/DLL (see doc/API.htm in the Ghostscript
  distribution).  This would allow us to print to any device that
  Ghostscript supports, although the user would still have to figure out
  the Ghostscript configuration.  Under MS Windows, the "mswinpr2" device
  (see doc/Devices.htm) outputs to MS Windows printer drivers, which could
  be useful.
** Add statistics of won/lost games/matches to the player records. (gary)
** Make sure the Nackgammon option works properly: record when loading/saving,
  make sure that InitBoard during analysis gets it right, etc.  Similarly
  for Egyptian and Jacoby.
** If a MOVE_NORMAL is marked bad, it's not clear whether that means a
  bad move, or a costly missed double.
** Consider some kind of interface for recording live matches as quickly
  as possible.  David Montgomery suggests showing a list of legal moves,
  ordered by equity, as soon as the dice roll is entered; hopefully the
  user will usually be able to select the top move and enter most of them
  very quickly.  Entry of illegal moves should be possible, and it should
  be easy to move back to correct mistakes.
** Think about adding features which attempt to predict the time and
  standard error of rollouts in advance (see Chuck's work). (gary)
** Investigate more sophisticated training techniques, e.g. real
  simulated annealing (see the GNU Scientific Library, at
  <http://sources.redhat.com/gsl/>).
** It would be nice if you could mark positions and moves for "Rollout later".
One could then look through a game and mark all positions of interest, set
the rollouts off and come back later.
** Consider a Mozilla plug-in so that boards in generated HTML
  can be displayed efficiently. (gary)
** We provide access to non-deterministic dice from random.org.  Add
  completely deterministic dice from noentropy.net as well.

* Bugs believed fixed:
** Save the results of rollouts/evaluations performed with hint during playing

* Obselete or problematic ideas (probably better not to implement these):
** Save partial input when TTY input is overwritten by an X command.
  The best way would be to unify what GetInput does and ProcessInput,
  with push/pop semantics for readline state.
** Nothing handles running out of memory gracefully.  A solution
  could be to write a malloc() wrapper that (if malloc fails) first
  tries to free memory (e.g. flush the eval cache); if malloc still
  doesn't succeed, then print an error message and longjmp() to the
  main loop.  When using the GNU C library, __malloc_hook can be used
  too (so we can intercept calls coming from Xlib, for instance).  We
  shouldn't longjmp() out of the hook, though (it might confuse library
  functions).
** When using mmap()ed bearoff databases, add a signal handler for
  SIGBUS/SIGSEGV to trap I/O errors.  Unfortunately, the semantics of
  errors on mmap()ed regions are the most unportable that can be imagined...
** Think about ways to improve event handling while "busy".  We could save
  them somewhere and then use gdk_event_put() when we're ready. (gary)
** The following two items are probably redundant once ParsePosition is
  extended (see above).
*** Add a command "show moves" which shows a list of legal moves, like hint
  does, but without evaluating them.
*** Also "add move", to add a specific move to the list (e.g.
  "add move 8/5 6/5").
** When 'Allow dragging to illegal input' is selected, Two consecutive Button 1
  click will both use the 'first' dice.  (This is working as intended -- to
  implement the opposite behaviour, see the item about exchanging dice under
  "GTK interface".)


Local Variables:
mode: outline
End: