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| Was GoKnot dead? | ||
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Its true, its been a long time since the previous GoKnot version was released (2 years), but the answer is No. It has never been dead. For a long time I was (internally) using something called GoKnot Transitional. That continuously changing product was not released because it was too "particular": Some design options were the result of "evolution" rather than "intelligent design" :-), it had two engines: one external .exe similar to GoKnot 1.2 and a predecessor of gke. Some parts were accumulating long "to do" lists while I was working elsewhere. I didn't feel it was useful to document something that was changing, so it had no doc. |
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| The transatlantic transition is complete! | ||
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GoKnot is reborn rather than updated. The internals are based on new functions oriented to nodes. When you cross the Atlantic (unlike the Pacific) you don't find enough islands to stop at. That's why the transition was long. In the future, since what had to be done, is now done, I will release frequently, its a promise. (By the way, I live in the Canary Islands, so don't send me maps of the Atlantic correcting my assertions, its a metaphor. :-)) | ||
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| Everything is new, except .. | ||
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I started GoKnot more than four years ago, mainly because I didn't like existing software, I wanted to do research of Go playing algorithms, and did not find a program I could use as a debugger. I planned to write a program that could be used as the only Go program for different uses: playing, studying, publishing, playing on the Internet, etc. That intention is still alive and now, it is closer to be accomplished than it has never been. GoKnot is concerned about compatibility. It is a native Windows (any version since/including 95) program and has been tested on Linux under Wine, where the GnuGo 3.6 engine linked through gke outperforms the same engine compiled with the native Linux compiler gcc. (Of course, this is due to the superior optimization quality of Microsoft's compiler with which the gnugo36.dll was compiled. Gke is just a "bridge".) The point is: Wine is not an emulator, a gke engine is a Crown Jewel, a fully optimized native Pentium binary, that may support: multi CPU optimization, SIMD (single instruction on multiple data) and, if its well written, is without exaggeration ten years ahead in performance of what can be written on managed platforms, such as .NET or Java. This means: If I release an engine in 2006 and you want to port that engine to Java, you need a machine released in 2016 to get a similar performance to that of my engine on a 2006 computer, and, of course, with about four times more memory requirements. Why should you wait ten years? GoKnot uses MAI2 multiple area interface, HTML help, CGD dialogs, .. Well there are many other design decisions which have not changed, but, in essence, GoKnot 2.0 is a new program. If you want a list of the major GoKnot features, follow the download link below. |
If you want to run GoKnot under Linux, you need this: | |