#Universal chess interface software#
#Universal chess interface free#

#Universal chess interface software#

Clearly when referring to a chess software package we must be careful to specify whether we are talking about the interface or the engine especially in cases where they both bear the same name. In the above example, Crafty acting as the brain can work equally well in either вЂњbodiesвЂќ/interfaces which will faithfully display all the moves decided on by Crafty. One crude analogy is to think of the interface as the вЂњbodyвЂќ and the chess engine as the вЂњbrainвЂќ that makes the decisions. This all works seamlessly together, that it looks like only one program is running, but if you view the programs running in your task manager, you can clearly see two programs at work. It also implies that there are two programs at work, the вЂњbrainвЂќ or the engine portion that dictates what move to be played, and the user interface (also known as the graphical user interface ), that handles the display of moves and interacts with the user.

#Universal chess interface free#

The fact that you can вЂњimportвЂќ say Crafty (a well known free Chess engine) into Winboard, Fritz, Chess Assistant, Bookup, or any other interface and have Crafty working implies that there must be some way for Crafty to communicate with the software. While both parts are often programmed by the same person, it's not always true.Д«y separating chess software into two separate components, you can now see now it's possible that one Chess engine can work happily in one interface as well as another.

So, for the case of Chessmaster, while the whole package is named Chessmaster it can be seen to be in fact made up of two parts, the Chessmaster interface and the chess engine which is named вЂњThe KingвЂќ written by Johan de Koning. This is to be distinguished from the chess engine, which is the portion of the program that actually decides or calculates what move to play. This could be anything from a the parts of a chess-playing program that displays the chess board, allows the user to make moves, the search filters in a database, or the online capabilities of a ICS client, etc. By user interface, I refer to the software portion that interacts with the user.

The first part is what I call the user interface (or graphical user interface) and the other part is the chess engine. In actual fact, we can actually split the software into 2 quite distinct components. When we talk about a normal piece of software that you buy like say, Chessmaster, you might see the whole software package as one complete whole.