[hrothgar]

Hi Fred

In your last announcement you posed a hypothetical regarding modular conventions that might "step" on one another using Capelletti and DON'T as an obvious example.

Needless to say, there are a lot of potential issues with this. I suspect that the worst case scenaria would involve partial over-writes where one module is fleshed out in more detail than the other.

My gut tells me that the best way to deal with this problem required adding some complexity to the file format by adding some type of argument to each branch/lead in the bidding tree.

For example, each and every bid related to the Capelletti convention would contain an argument describing this line as being part of "capelletti". Assume that someone wanted to modify the CC by merging DON'T into a file that already contained Capelletti.

If no bids in DON'T and Cappelleti overlap than DON'T gets added if with no problems (hypothetically this might occur if we wanted to play DON'T in direct and Capelleti in balancing). If, however, one or more of the bids described in DON'T overlaps Capelletti, then EVERY bid containing the DON'T argument would need to be removed.

I'm sure that some "real" programmer can propose a smoother description / implementation...

[pigpenz]

hrothgar, on Sep 30 2005, 08:25 PM, said:

I'm sure that some "real" programmer can propose a smoother description / implementation...

ouch some real programmer

[hrothgar]

pigpenz, on Oct 1 2005, 02:12 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Sep 30 2005, 08:25 PM, said:

I'm sure that some "real" programmer can propose a smoother description / implementation...

ouch some real programmer

Did this come out wrong?

I've done lots of project management and algorithm design.
Even a bit of work on architectures.

However, its been VERY rare that I've had to do final implementation

[david_c]

hrothgar, on Oct 1 2005, 02:25 AM, said:

My gut tells me that the best way to deal with this problem required adding some complexity to the file format by adding some type of argument to each branch/lead in the bidding tree.

For example, each and every bid related to the Capelletti convention would contain an argument describing this line as being part of "capelletti".

This doesn't seem to be a problem with the new way of adding conventions: it adds them as a whole, rather than a line at a time. That is, if you add Cappelletti, the only line where this appears in your file is "+Capp.bss".

I suspect that the best way to solve the problem is to give the list of conventions an order, so that conventions which are high up on the list take precedence over ones which are lower down. And all conventions take precedence over lines which are explicit in the main file. I don't think it's practical to force all the conventions to be consistent, as there are too many ways in which you can create conflicts (e.g. by editing the files for the conventions). But perhaps the program ought to give a warning when two conventions are conflicting.

This post has been edited by david_c: 2005-October-01, 07:20

[fred]

david_c, on Oct 1 2005, 12:54 PM, said:

I suspect that the best way to solve the problem is to give the list of conventions an order, so that conventions which are high up on the list take precedence over ones which are lower down. And all conventions take precedence over lines which are explicit in the main file. I don't think it's practical to force all the conventions to be consistent, as there are too many ways in which you can create conflicts (e.g. by editing the files for the conventions). But perhaps the program ought to give a warning when two conventions are conflicting.

This pretty much mirrors my thinking, but I am not entirely satisfied that there is not a better solution. Still thinking about it...

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Dwingo]

2 topics here

1. Is there any way that I can incorporate automatically (a) Capp on Opps weak NT opening and ( DONT on Opps Strong NT opening?

2. I saw the default BBO ITALIA card. Full disclosure in a language that you dont understand is not going to be full disclosure. Any thought on how this is going to be resolved?

Godwin

[hrothgar]

Dwingo, on Oct 2 2005, 04:53 AM, said:

2. I saw the default BBO ITALIA card. Full disclosure in a language that you dont understand is not going to be full disclosure. Any thought on how this is going to be resolved?

Comment 1: Sponsoring organizations have the right to conduct tournaments using whatever language they want. There are a number of tournaments on BBO that are restricted to Italanian speakers / French speakers / whatever. It seems entirely right and proper that these organizations would chose to focus on developing convention cards that will provide the most value to their members.

Comment 2: Recall that the Convention Files can be used for educational purposes as well as for disclosure. This also suggests providing players will materials that they are easily able to understand an assimilate.

Comment 3: Traditionally, international events are conducted using English as the official language. As I understand matters, if two German pairs meet in Esotril, they are expected to alert/announce in English. I presume that same logic carries over onto BBO. Most "international" will probably be conducted using English.

Comment 4: I don't speak any Italian. Even so, I had very little trouble understanding the BBO Italia convention cards. I suspect that I'd have a lot more trouble understand a non romance or germanic language like Turkish or Polish. Even so, the canned dispositions should provide a lot of useful information.