From: Colin Paul Adams COLINA DEMON CO UK> Date: 22 may 1997 Subject: Re: SHOGI >>>>> "Anthony" == Anthony R Glass MTCO COM> writes: Anthony> Not to whine or anything, but maybe one of the reasons nobody Anthony> plays on it is that they can't. Not all of us are up to speed Anthony> on the 32 bit bandwagon, and I'm going to need a few more Anthony> tangible reasons to buy a new system than just to play shogi. Anthony> As wonderful an innovation as Java Shogi is, Mr. van Straaten Anthony> brings up a good point: why hasn't anyone developed a client Anthony> that everyone, including us 3.x cave dwellers, can download Anthony> for use on a telnet server, like Chess and Shiangqi players Anthony> have done? I ask this question rhetorically, because the Anthony> obvious answer is because they haven't; I would, but I don't Anthony> have the skills (yet anyway--I'm working on that part!), and Anthony> I'm sure those who have the skills have either written off Anthony> Windows 3.x (and its users in the process) or don't have the Anthony> time. I for one would have been playing internet Shogi long Anthony> ago, and I'm sure hundreds of others would be playing as well Anthony> on such a server, but the clients aren't there for us to Anthony> download and play on (unless you are a UNIX user (and I'm Anthony> sorry, but while UNIX may be a superior operating system, Anthony> insisting that everyone switch to UNIX in order to play Shogi Anthony> on the net is NOT going to help popularize Shogi in this Anthony> country.) Actually, I am in the process of writing a program to play most known Shogi variants (including modern Shogi) across the Internet. This was supposed to be an interim measure, so the server will be fairly primitive, but it will work. Both the client and the server are being written for UNIX (Linux to be precise, but it should be very portable), but the source code will be available, so people will easily be able to write clients for inferior Operating Systems (if you can dignify MS products with such a name). Difficult to say when it will be ready - but maybe late July is a good guess. Then we'll need somewhere to host the server. -- Colin Paul Adams Preston, Lancashire, England colin colina demon co uk