# 2024 Mar 6

[En-En] Some thoughts after reading through both specs again:

1. Messages should be written in full at once (no flushing of half-written
   messages). This might seem really pedantic, but HMK does not explicitly
   enforce that. Obviously, multiple messages can be sent in a singular flush,
   since newline delimiters are required.

2. In 5·3, I don't get what protocol 1 accomplishes. Anything not caring about
   your spec won't send it and protocol 2 is no guarantee a bug will not cause
   a violation.

3. [removed]

4. Provide specific examples of why an engine would want/need to send a null
   move ("bestmove 0000"). If a position does not have a legal move then the
   engine responses with "info error" and doesn't update the position which
   leads to a position desync, which leads me into...

5. If you are going to have "info error", then easy-to-foresee errors (no legal
   moves, ambiguous options, etc.) should have a standardized body, lest they
   become IO noise instead of actionable communications.

6. If you require protocol to be sent before any option then you can enforce
   a stricter set of rules on options parameters, and avoid most stupid
   cases (see USI and UCCI). That said, I think it is best to not enforce any
   character encoding and work directly with raw bytes (which has the benefits
   of not needing to perform validity checks and being more correct on filepath
   edge cases). Handling newlines with file paths is just an escaping problem,
   which HMK was not remotely thinking about.