[bug #27844] Escape sequences in popup messages

[Kieran Mansley-3]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?27844>

                 Summary: Escape sequences in popup messages
                 Project: XBoard
            Submitted by: None
            Submitted on: Thu Oct 29 07:58:14 2009
                Category: None
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any

    _______________________________________________________

Details:

Currently escape sequences in the messages an engine gives with commads like
'telluser' or 'tellusererror' are not recognized, and printed litteraly. As a
consequence, engine authors are now dmanding new tell-like commands for
popping up multi-line message boxes.

Is there any reason not to recognize escape sequences for LF and TAB in such
messages? I would highly prefer that solution over adding (and implementing)
new tell*** commands. I recently noted that XBoard, unlke WinBoard did not
even recognize '\n' as LF in a user-supplied InitString, so that xboard
-firstInitString "new\nrandom\n" actually failed to start the engine! This is
fixed now, but it would be easy to make the same routine that expands the
escapes act on the messages passed by 'telluser' and 'tellusererror' before
displaying them.

H.G. Muller

P.S. what is the intended difference between 'telluser' and 'tellusererror'
anyway? Would it be safe to say (and put it in the protocol specs) that using
'tellusererror' allows the engine then to exit without waiting for 'quit'?
Currently the user gets a double error popup if that happens, one from the
engine, which is then eclipsed by a more cryptic one from XBoard (like "engine
xxx exited unexpectedly: broken pipe").




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[Kieran Mansley-3]

Follow-up Comment #1, bug #27844 (project xboard):

WinBoard converts n to a real newline in command-line arguments because there
is no way to put a real newline in a command-line argument under Windows,
whereas under Unix/Linux it's possible.  However it probably makes sense to
backport that feature to xboard for convenience, because putting a real
newline into the command line is something people may not realize is
possible.

I can see that it makes sense in telluser, etc., too.

I think the idea was that telluser should give you a non-modal popup that
dismisses automatically if you click on the board (actually at one time I
think it just showed the message in the line where moves are shown, but that's
too easy to miss), while tellusererror should give a modal popup that would
have to be dismissed by clicking its [OK] button before you could do anything
else.

I don't remember if that distinction is observed in both xboard and WinBoard
4.2.7 and haven't checked 4.4.x.  It might not be consistent between xboard
and WinBoard -- at one point I remember that at least one of them did the
wrong thing because I hadn't figured out how to make both modal and non-modal
popups under both X and Windows.  I don't remember which case was missing or
if I fixed it later.

tellusererror wasn't meant to be a fatal error that would make the engine
exit, but it might be OK to redefine it that way.  You'd have to check if
engine authors are using it for nonfatal errors.



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[Kieran Mansley-3]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #27844 (project xboard):

OK, thanks fo the clarification. I tried to get in LINEFEEDS in my Ubuntu, by
escaping them with backslash, but it did not seem to work. But I am a Linux
newbie, so I might have done something wrong (Perhaps leaving out quoting
makes the difference?) Anyway, 4.4.x supports the escapes in the InitString.

It sounds good to have the "auto-close" feature available. We should mention
it in the specs then, though, so that authors know what they will get. I will
check how things currently work. I think the mouse handler currently starts
with ErrorPopDown()...

There is no need to _force_ an engine to exit after using "tellusererror".
Just that it can reserve the right to do so. (A right with it normally has
only after receiving "quit".) Some people complained about geting double error
popups on a fatal engine error. So I just want to suppress the "exited
unexpectedly" fatal-error popup of the GUI in this case. If the engine does
not exit, that would not appear anyway, and everything is fine.

H.G.

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