Hi Jurie,



I hate messing around with makefiles, which is why I use a  

development environment such as JBuilder or Netbeans. Then I just say  

"compile everything", and it does it!



For JFreeChart, unzip the package and look in the lib directory.  

You'll need to include jfreechart-1.0.1.jar and maybe  

jcommon-1.0.0.jar and gnujaxp.jar in your classpath when you compile  

and when you run.



For itext, it should just come in a jar file, so you need to include  

that in your classpath for compiling and running.



A development environment makes that easier -- you just add those jar  

files to the required libraries, and it will take care of the rest.





I think genetic programming is good for evaluation functions. In  

fact, that's all genetic programming really does -- generate  

functions, whether that function is an evaluation function, an  

equation, a function which moves Pac-Man in a game, whatever. Of  

course, I've only used GP, and not any other paradigm, so I could be  

biased :)



When you have an evaluation function, I'm pretty sure you mean some  

function which returns a number which is higher if the board position  

is more favorable. GP is perfect for that. But the purpose of an  

evaluation function is usually to generate a bunch of hypothetical  

board positions, compare the evaluation function (possibly to some  

number of moves), and choose the best move based on the results.



What I did was evolve a function which would actually play the game  

-- it would make a move. It didn't use minimax or anything like an  

evaluation function. I guess it depends on whether your game is more  

analytic (less reliant on chance) or probabilistic (more reliant on  

chance).



--Rob



On Aug 30, 2006, at 3:37 AM, Jurie Oberholzer wrote:



> Hi Rob

>

> Thanks so much for your help, needless to say I am still  

> struggeling to get the makefile to run to completion. I am not sure  

> where i should be unzipping the JFreechart files to?  I keep  

> getting the error that  package org.jfree,chart does not exist.  I  

> get a total of five errors when I run the makefile.

>

> With regard to your other comment, I am looking at using the  

> genetic programming paradigm and that is why I have chosen to use  

> ecj. Is ecj my best option? When you speak about evolving players  

> what exactly do you mean as I am looking at generating an  

> evaluation function mainly.

>

> Thanks for all your help.

>

> Jurie