XBoard and WinBoard: Frequently Asked Questions
This document answers some frequently asked questions about the
graphical chess interfaces XBoard and WinBoard. A hyperlinked version
of this FAQ is available on the Web through the page
http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html. This FAQ is in need of revision.
Please contact us if you'd like to help update it.
_________________________________________________________________
Outline
* [A] Introduction and hot topics
* [B] XBoard and WinBoard
* [C] XBoard and WinBoard, bugs and problems
* [D] Crafty and other topics
_________________________________________________________________
Detailed contents
* [A] Introduction and hot topics
* [A.1] What are XBoard and WinBoard?
* [A.2] Where can I get chess information and chess software?
* [A.3] What are the current version numbers for XBoard and
WinBoard?
* [A.4] Who is working on this project?
* [A.5] How do I report bugs, offer help, etc.?
* [A.6] What are the future plans for XBoard and WinBoard?
[B] XBoard and WinBoard
* [B.1] What is XBoard?
* [B.2] Is there an XBoard for Microsoft Windows? What is WinBoard?
How do I install WinBoard?
* [B.3] Is there an XBoard for the Amiga? What is AmyBoard?
* [B.4] Is there an XBoard for the Macintosh?
* [B.5] Does XBoard run on VMS?
* [B.6] What is cmail?
* [B.7] How do I build XBoard? Do I have to have gcc?
* [B.8] Can I use XBoard or WinBoard to play a game of chess with
another human?
* [B.9] Will WinBoard run on Windows 3.1? How about Windows CE (also
known as Pocket PC)?
* [B.10] How do I use XBoard or WinBoard as an external viewer for
PGN files with my Web browser?
* [B.11] How do I use WinBoard as an external viewer for PGN files
with the MS Windows File Manager or Explorer?
* [B.12] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal with XBoard?
* [B.13] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal with WinBoard?
* [B.14] How do I play bughouse with XBoard or WinBoard?
* [B.16] What is Zippy? How can I interface a chess program to the
Internet Chess Servers?
* [B.17] How can I interface my own chess program to XBoard or
WinBoard?
* [B.18] How can I recompile WinBoard from source?
* [B.19] How can I use XBoard or WinBoard to talk to an Internet
Chess Server through a firewall or proxy?
* [B.20] How can I use XBoard or WinBoard on chess.net with
accuclock?
* [B.21] Can I get Zippy to do one or more ICS commands
automatically at the start or end of each game?
* [B.22] How do I print from WinBoard?
* [B.23] Can I get Zippy to automatically reconnect to ICS when its
connection breaks?
* [B.24] The chess engines are too strong and always beat me. How
can I adjust the difficulty level to make them weaker?
* [B.25] May I use the piece bitmaps from XBoard/WinBoard in my own
program?
[C] XBoard and WinBoard, bugs and problems
* [C.1] I can't build XBoard because the X11/Xaw/... include files
are not found.
* [C.2] Configuring or building XBoard fails due to missing header
files, missing libraries, or undefined symbols.
* [C.3] I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with a modem. I'm not
running SLIP or PPP, but just dialing in to an ordinary login
account ("shell account").
* [C.4] I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with Windows 95 and
SLIP or PPP. When trying to start up, it gets the error "Address
family not supported by protocol family" (or some equally strange
message).
* [C.5] When I try to run WinBoard, I get the message "Failed to
start chess program gnuchess on localhost: NO LANGFILE (file
gnuchess.lan not found)".
* [C.6] I want to use XBoard or WinBoard as an Internet Chess Server
interface, but the ICS Client option is grayed out on the menu.
* [C.7] How do I give command-line options to a Windows program like
WinBoard?
* [C.9] When I exit from WinBoard after using it to play against a
chess program on my machine, the chess program keeps running in
the background.
* [C.12] Why do my ICS opponents often get extra time after they
make their moves? Why do I sometimes lose time off my clock after
I make my move?
* [C.13] I can't run WinBoard unless I delete the WinBoard.ini file
each time!
* [C.15] I get errors compiling XBoard's parser.c.
* [C.16] I get an error building WinBoard from source because "flex"
is not found.
* [C.17] XBoard hangs shortly after connecting to an ICS when used
with dxterm, cmdtool, dtterm, kterm, konsole, or other substitutes
for xterm.
* [C.18] The WinBoard pieces show up in the wrong colors, appear
distorted, or are not visible at all.
* [C.19] XBoard or WinBoard tells me "Error: first chess program
(...) exited unexpectedly".
* [C.20] XBoard tells me "Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry",
or "too few colors available; trying monochrome mode", or "XPM
pieces cannot be used in monochrome mode".
* [C.21] When I log in to freechess.org, the Enter key doesn't work,
and I have to use Ctrl+J instead. But when I use WinBoard, Ctrl+J
doesn't work either, so I'm stuck.
* [C.22] XBoard says, "Failed to start first chess program gnuchessx
on localhost: gnuchessx: No such file or directory."
[D] Crafty and other topics
* [D.1] What is XChess?
* [D.2] What is Winsock Chess?
* [D.3] What is Crafty?
* [D.4] How do I use Crafty with XBoard?
* [D.5] How do I use Crafty with WinBoard?
* [D.6] How do I use GNU Chess 5 with XBoard?
_________________________________________________________________
[A] Introduction and hot topics
_________________________________________________________________
[A.1] What are XBoard and WinBoard?
XBoard and WinBoard are graphical user interfaces for chess. XBoard
runs with the X Window System on Unix systems (including GNU/Linux);
see topic [B.1]. WinBoard runs on true 32-bit Microsoft Windows
operating systems, such as Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, and
should continue to work on future 32-bit Windows systems. It does not
work on Windows CE (also known as Pocket PC), nor does it work on
16-bit Windows systems such as Windows 3.1. See topic [B.2].
_________________________________________________________________
[A.2] Where can I get chess information and chess software?
As a shortcut to most things mentioned in this FAQ, try Tim Mann's
Chess Web page, http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html. This page page is
a good place to get the latest released versions of XBoard and
WinBoard and the most up-to-date version of this FAQ. Also see our
Savannah project pages at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/.
If you have other questions about XBoard/WinBoard that aren't answered
in this FAQ, you can try Aaron Tay's WinBoard and Chess Engines FAQ,
at http://www.aarontay.per.sg/Winboard/.
For general news and information about chess, try the newsgroup
hierarchy rec.games.chess.*, especially the groups
rec.games.chess.misc and rec.games.chess.computer. Both of the latter
groups have very informative FAQs maintained by Steve Pribut; look for
them on the newsgroups or at
http://www.clark.net/pub/pribut/chess.html.
Like other GNU software, you can get XBoard, and WinBoard by anonymous
FTP from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ and its many mirror sites. Look in
the subdirectories xboard, and winboard. The .tar.gz suffix on the
files there indicates they were packed with tar and compressed with
gzip. The .exe or .zip suffixes indicate files that were packed and
compressed with zip.
For other chess software, try the Internet Chess Library. Use
anonymous FTP to connect to ftp.freechess.org, or go to the Web page
http://www.freechess.org/. You can get chess software, game
collections, the FAQ file for rec.games.chess, and other chess-related
material there, in the directory pub/chess. The FTP server can
automatically decompress files for you as you download them, useful if
you don't have gzip.
Here is a sample anonymous ftp session. Some of the ftp server's
responses are abbreviated, but all the commands you must type are
included.
% ftp ftp.gnu.org
Connected to ftp.gnu.org
Name: anonymous
Password: your-email-address@your-site
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> cd /pub/gnu/xboard
ftp> dir
-rw-r--r-- 1 14910 wheel 1057625 May 20 00:25 xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz
ftp> get xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz
150 BINARY connection for xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz (1057625 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> quit
_________________________________________________________________
[A.3] What are the current version numbers for XBoard and WinBoard?
At this writing, the current version numbers are:
* XBoard 4.2.7
* WinBoard 4.2.7
_________________________________________________________________
[A.4] Who is working on this project?
Please see our Savannah project pages at
https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/ for a list of active
developers. Many others occasionally contribute suggestions and
snippets of code, for which we are grateful.
_________________________________________________________________
[A.5] How do I report bugs, offer help, etc.?
Bug reports, suggestions, and offers to help on XBoard or WinBoard
should be sent to bug-xboard@gnu.org. (Note: as of 4 Nov 2003, this
mailing list is temporarily broken. You can send mail to
bug-xboard@tim-mann.org instead until it is fixed.)
Beginner questions and discussion about the program may get faster
answers on the WinBoard Forum at http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/.
If you are developing a chess engine that works with XBoard or
WinBoard (or an alternative GUI that works with such engines), see the
Chess Engines mailing list, hosted at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chess-engines.
Any time you want to report a possible bug in XBoard or WinBoard, we
need to know exactly what you did, and exactly what error (or other)
messages you got.
If you are using Unix, run the "script" program, run XBoard with the
-debug flag (if you get as far as running it), do whatever is
necessary to reproduce the problem, type "exit" to the shell, and mail
us the resulting typescript file. We also need to know what
hardware/operating system combination you are using. The command
"uname -a" will usually tell you this; include its output in your
typescript.
If you are using MS Windows, run WinBoard with the -debug flag, and
send us a copy of the WinBoard.debug file. If you aren't sure how to
add command-line flags to WinBoard, you can hit Ctrl+Alt+F12 to create
a WinBoard.debug file after WinBoard starts, but that is not as good,
because a few messages that would have been printed at the start are
lost.
Either way, please send us the exact text of the commands you typed
and the output you got, not just your recollection of approximately
what they were. The messages may seem meaningless to you, but they are
very meaningful to us and essential for diagnosing problems.
_________________________________________________________________
[A.6] What are the future plans for XBoard and WinBoard?
Our plans are always in flux. As with most free software projects, the
next release will happen when it happens -- or it may never happen.
This has always been the policy for XBoard/WinBoard. Releases have
never been promised in specific time frames.
Starting in November 2003, several new developers have joined the
project, and work is now hosted at
https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/. Lots of work is just
getting underway, but nothing is far along yet.
Here is a partial list of items that have a nonzero probability of
happening in finite time.
* Small bug fixes. Occasionally someone sends us a fix, or reports a
small bug very clearly so that we're able to fix it in a few
minutes work.
* Protocol version 3. The members of the chess engine authors'
mailing list discussed a set of proposed features for the next
version of the XBoard/WinBoard chess engine communication
protocol. Unfortunately, this project has gotten only as far as
that discussion took it; no revisions of the protocol spec or
coding have been done yet. A few simple features are very clearly
needed, though, and will probably appear in time.
* Contributed features. Several people have mailed me code to add
various features. Most of this code is available on the
XBoard/WinBoard extensions page at
http://www.tim-mann.org/extensions.html, but it is not in any
official releases yet. We are in the process of getting folks to
formally assign the copyrights on their contributions to the Free
Software Foundation so that we can include it in official releases
in the future.
* Internationalization. Several people have expressed interest in
internationalizing XBoard/WinBoard, and so hopefully this project
will go forward. Once the internationalization support is in, we
will need more translators. Watch for news on the xboard-devel
mailing list on our Savannah pages.
_________________________________________________________________
[B] XBoard and WinBoard
_________________________________________________________________
[B.1] What is XBoard?
XBoard is a graphical user interface for chess. It displays a
chessboard on the screen, accepts moves made with the mouse, and loads
and saves games in Portable Game Notation (PGN). XBoard is free
software. It serves as a front-end for many different chess services,
including:
Chess engines that will run on your machine and play a game against
you or help you analyze, such as GNU Chess and Crafty (topic [D.3]
below).
Chess servers on the Internet, where you can connect to play chess
with people from all over the world, watch other users play, or just
hang out and chat.
Correspondence chess played by electronic mail. The cmail program
(topic [B.6] below) automates the tasks of parsing email from your
opponent, playing his moves out on your board, and mailing your reply
move after you've chosen it.
The Web and your own saved games. You can use XBoard as a helper
application to view PGN games in your Web browser, or to load and save
your own PGN files.
XBoard runs under Unix or Unix-compatible systems. It requires the X
Window System, version X11R4 or later. There are also ports of XBoard
to 32-bit Microsoft Windows and to the Amiga. See topics [B.2] and
[B.3] respectively.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.2] Is there an XBoard for Microsoft Windows? What is WinBoard? How do I
install WinBoard?
WinBoard is a port of XBoard to 32-bit Microsoft Windows systems, such
as Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, and XP. It uses the same back end
chess code as XBoard, but the front end graphics code is a complete
rewrite. WinBoard is free software.
The WinBoard distribution includes a port of GNU Chess to Win32. The
GNU Chess port is distributed in executable form, with instructions
for rebuilding it from the standard GNU Chess sources (available
separately). You should have at least 16 to 24 MB of memory to run GNU
Chess with WinBoard.
The WinBoard distribution also includes the ICC timestamp and FICS
timeseal programs (topic [B.12]).
cmail (topic [B.6]) has not been ported to Windows. All the other
XBoard functions are included in WinBoard. The International Email
Chess Group web site at http://www.iecg.org/ recommends ECTool
(http://www.ectool.nu/) for playing correspondence chess under
Windows.
You install WinBoard as follows. Download the WinBoard package to your
PC (see topic [A.2]). It will be a file with a name like
winboard-4_0_0.exe. Double-click on this file in the Explorer or File
Manager to run it. Follow the on-screen prompts.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.3] Is there an XBoard for the Amiga? What is AmyBoard?
AmyBoard is a port of XBoard to the Amiga, by Jochen Wiedmann. The
distribution includes a port of GNU Chess. AmyBoard is free software.
The current version of AmyBoard is 330.5 (based on XBoard 3.3.0). No
one is currently maintaining it.
System requirements:
* An Amiga (obviously :-), running OS 2.04 or later, 2Mb RAM or
more.
* MUI 2.0 or later.
* Workbench or another screen with no less than 640x400 pixels
(adjustable with the MUI-Prefs); this restriction is just because
we don't have bitmaps with less than 40x40 pixels per square. If
someone contributes bitmaps with 20x20 or 20x25, they will work
with any Hires mode.
If you would like to use an ICS, you need an Internet connection via
either
* a telnet-like program, or
* a terminal program reading from stdin and writing to stdout.
AmyBoard is available in the Internet Chess Library (topic [A.2]).
_________________________________________________________________
[B.4] Is there an XBoard for the Macintosh?
Because MacOS X has a Unix base, XBoard will compile and run on it.
You do need an X11 (X Window System) server and client libraries.
These do not come with Mac OS, but both free and commercial versions
are available. Once you install the X11 package, XBoard is reported to
compile and run without changes. I am not a Mac user and have not
tried this myself, so I cannot answer questions about it. Version
4.2.6 and earlier of XBoard come with an old copy of the config.sub
utility that does not recognize Mac OS X, so to build XBoard, you'll
have to tell the configure program what OS you are running. Follow the
instructions in topic [B.7] of this FAQ, but add the argument
--host=powerpc-apple-bsd to the end of the "configure" command line.
There is no version of XBoard or WinBoard that runs with the native
(non-X11) Mac graphical interface, and none that runs on MacOS 9 or
earlier.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.5] Does XBoard run on VMS?
No. This port would probably be a lot easier than the Win32 and Amiga
ports were, because VMS has the X Window system (under the name
DECwindows) and is now POSIX compliant. However, I don't know enough
about VMS to do the port myself, and I don't have time. If you do,
give it a try! Send mail to me, tim@tim-mann.org (Tim Mann), if you're
working on this.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.6] What is cmail?
cmail is a program that helps you play and keep track of electronic
mail correspondence chess games using XBoard. It is distributed with
XBoard and has its own manual page. cmail is free software. It was
written by Even Welsh. cmail has not been ported to Windows; sorry.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.7] How do I build XBoard? Do I need gcc?
The first step to building XBoard is to get the distribution file. See
topic [A.2] for places you can ftp the software from.
Next, decide what directory tree you are going to install XBoard in.
The default is /usr/local, but you probably don't have write access to
that directory unless you are a system administrator. If you do, type
the following to install it there:
gzip -cd xboard-*.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
cd xboard-*/
./configure
make
su
make install
If you want to install xboard in your personal home directory
($HOME/bin), type this:
gzip -cd xboard-*.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
cd xboard-*/
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install
If the first step above fails because you don't have gzip, see topic
[A.2], and ask a local Unix expert if you need more help. If you have
any problems with the last two steps, read the READ_ME and INSTALL
files in the xboard-*/ directory. You will also find this FAQ there.
You don't need to have gcc to build XBoard. Almost any Unix C compiler
should do.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.8] Can I use XBoard or WinBoard to play a game of chess with another
human?
The only way for two humans on different machines to play chess in
real time using XBoard/WinBoard is to use an Internet Chess Server as
an intermediary. That is, each player runs his own copy of XBoard or
WinBoard, both of them log into an ICS, and they play a game there.
Two copies of XBoard/WinBoard cannot communicate with each other
directly.
Instructions on how to get started with Internet chess are included
with the XBoard and WinBoard distributions. The network addresses
included in the distribution may not always be current. The oldest and
largest ICS is the Internet Chess Club at chessclub.com, which now has
a fee for registered use, but still allows free unregistered use.
There are also many newer sites with no fees, using the Free Internet
Chess Server implementation (FICS). The most active FICS site is
freechess.org. On these and most other chess servers, the port number
to use is 5000.
If you don't have network connectivity to any ICS site, you can run
your own server using a version of the FICS code, but this is not
easy. See http://www.tim-mann.org/ics.html#ownics for advice and
pointers.
The cmail program included with XBoard lets you play email postal
games with another human; see topic [B.6].
Two humans can play chess on the same machine using one copy of
XBoard/WinBoard in Edit Game mode, but the clocks don't run in this
mode, so it's of limited usefulness.
See also topic [D.2], Winsock Chess.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.9] Will WinBoard run on Windows 3.1? How about Windows CE (also known as
Pocket PC)?
WinBoard does not run on Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11,
etc., not even with the Win32s compatibility package. The main problem
is that Win32s does not have threads or real concurrent processes. A
port of WinBoard to Windows 3.1 is possible in theory, but it would be
difficult and messy, and no one is going to do it.
WinBoard does not run on Windows CE (also known as Pocket PC). I don't
know what would be required to port it.
WinBoard does run well on full 32-bit versions of Windows, such as
Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, and XP, and should continue to work on
future 32-bit Windows systems.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.10] How do I use XBoard or WinBoard as an external viewer for PGN files
with my Web browser?
1) On Unix systems:
- Add the following line to the file .mime.types in your home
directory. (Create the file if it doesn't exist already.)
application/x-chess-pgn pgn
- Add the following line to the file .mailcap in your home directory.
(Create the file if it doesn't exist already.)
application/x-chess-pgn; xboard -ncp -lgf %s
- Exit from your Web browser and restart it.
2) On MS Windows systems:
The exact procedure depends on which Web browser you are using. The
current version of WinBoard automatically configures itself as your
PGN viewer for local files, Netscape 4.x and later, and Internet
Explorer. This automatic setup probably works for all other current
Web browsers, too.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.11] How do I use WinBoard as an external viewer for PGN files with the MS
Windows File Manager or Explorer?
WinBoard sets this up automatically when you install it, except on old
versions of Windows NT (prior to 4.0). On Windows NT 3.51 or earlier,
go to the File Manager, click on the File menu, select Associate,
enter "pgn" as the extension, and use the Browse button to find your
copy of WinBoard and set up the association.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.12] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal with XBoard?
First, get the appropriate version of timestamp or timeseal for your
machine from ftp.chessclub.com or ftp.freechess.org. Second, be sure
that you can connect using XBoard without timestamp/timeseal. Third,
be sure that you can connect using timestamp/timeseal without XBoard.
See the help files on ICC and FICS or ask people online if you have
problems.
If you are in a completely ordinary situation, where your machine is
directly on the Internet and you can connect to ICC or FICS without
timestamp/timeseal using just the command "xboard -ics" or "xboard
-ics -icshost freechess.org", change that command to one of the
following:
xboard -ics -icshost 204.178.125.65 -icshelper timestamp
xboard -ics -icshost 164.58.253.13 -icshelper timeseal
If you have a firewall between your machine and the ICS, see topic
[B.19].
If you normally have to use the "/icscomm" command line option on
xboard to log into a second machine, and then telnet to ICC or FICS
from there, you are going to have to run the Unix version of timestamp
or timeseal on the second machine. (If the second machine is not
running Unix, you are out of luck.) Get the appropriate version of
timestamp or timeseal onto the shell machine via FTP; see the help
files on ICC and FICS for instructions. Then simply run it when you
would normally run telnet. In this configuration you are not protected
against lag between your PC and the shell machine, or for lag caused
by heavy load on the shell machine itself from other users.
For further information on timestamp and timeseal, see the help files
on ICC and FICS.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.13] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal with WinBoard?
If you select an ICS from either the WinBoard Startup dialog or the
Windows Start submenu that WinBoard installs, WinBoard automatically
runs timestamp or timeseal if the ICS you chose is known to support
it.
If you are constructing a WinBoard command line by hand, add the
option "/icshelper timestamp" or "/icshelper timeseal" to the WinBoard
command line to use timestamp or timeseal. Both timestamp.exe and
timeseal.exe are included in the WinBoard distribution. They both
function identically to the Unix versions, as documented in "help
timestamp" on ICC and "help timeseal" on FICS.
If you have a firewall between your machine and the ICS, see topic
[B.19].
If you normally have to use the "/icscomm" command line option on
WinBoard to log into a shell account, and then telnet to ICC or FICS
from there, you are going to have to run the Unix version of timestamp
or timeseal on the shell machine. (If the shell account is not on a
Unix machine, you are out of luck.) Get the appropriate version of
timestamp or timeseal onto the shell machine via FTP; see the help
files on ICC and FICS for instructions. Then simply run it when you
would normally run telnet. In this configuration you are not protected
against lag between your PC and the shell machine, or for lag caused
by heavy load on the shell machine itself from other users.
For further information on timestamp and timeseal, see the help files
on ICC and FICS.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.14] How do I play bughouse with XBoard or WinBoard?
XBoard and WinBoard have simple but effective bughouse support.
Offboard piece holdings are shown in the board window's banner, and
you drop offboard pieces using the right mouse button. Press it over
the destination square to pop up a menu of pieces.
XBoard and WinBoard can display only one board at a time, but you can
observe your partner's game by running a second copy of the program
and logging in as a guest. (Unfortunately, this is not possible if you
are using the /icscomm option.) To observe your partner's games
automatically, use the "follow" or "pfollow" ICS command; see the ICS
online help for details.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.16] What is Zippy? How can I interface a chess program to the Internet
Chess Servers?
Zippy is an interface that lets a compatible chess engine (such as GNU
Chess or Crafty) act as a computer player on an Internet Chess Server.
Zippy is included in both the XBoard and WinBoard distributions. It is
implemented as a small amount of additional code within XBoard or
WinBoard. For documentation, see the file zippy.README, included in
both distributions or available from my chess Web page,
http://www.tim-mann/chess.html. The version of zippy.README on my Web
page is often more up-to-date than those in the XBoard/WinBoard
distributions. You'll also find a "biography" of Zippy and pointers to
the original Zippy the Pinhead comic strips on my Web page. Please
read zippy.README carefully before you ask me any questions about
Zippy.
Using a computer to choose your moves on a chess server is considered
cheating unless your account is on the computer (C) list. Read "help
computer" on your favorite server for details on their policy. Most of
the servers have plenty of computers running now, so they will not be
excited about having you run a new one unless you have written your
own chess engine. They don't really need yet another Crafty or GNU
Chess clone.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.17] How can I interface my own chess program to XBoard or WinBoard?
This is a non-trivial task. XBoard and WinBoard were not designed with
a clean interface for talking to chess programs; they were written to
work with an existing version of GNU Chess that expects to be talking
to a person. Your program has to emulate GNU Chess's rather
idiosyncratic command structure to work with XBoard and WinBoard. We
are gradually cleaning up, improving, and documenting the interface as
newer versions of XBoard and WinBoard come out, however.
For documentation, see the file engine-intf.html, included in both
distributions or available from my chess Web page,
http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html. The version of engine-intf.html on
my Web page is often more up-to-date than those in the XBoard/WinBoard
distributions.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.18] How can I recompile WinBoard from source?
The source code for WinBoard is available from the author's Web page,
http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html.
WinBoard is currently developed using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0. You
can build the program from the MSVC++ GUI by opening the project file
(winboard.dsp) and telling MSVC++ to build the project. You can also
build it from the the command line by using the nmake program supplied
with MSVC++.
To build WinBoard with the free Cygwin tools, available from
http://www.cygwin.com/), use the command "make -f cygwin.mak".
WinBoard 4.2.5 was successfully compiled with the net release of
Cygwin as downloaded on 20-March-2001 (cygwin1.dll 1.1.8, gcc
2.95.2-6, binutils 20001221-1, flex 2.5.4-1), but exhibits a
command-line parsing bug; see item 511 in the ToDo file that comes
with WinBoard. WinBoard 4.1.0 does not compile with Cygwin. WinBoard
4.0.7 is known to compile with Cygwin BL20.1.
To build WinBoard with Borland C++ 4.5, use "borland.mak", supplied
with the WinBoard sources, as the Makefile. Support for Borland C++
was contributed by Don Fong and has not been tested by the author of
WinBoard.
WinBoard is a Win32 application, so you definitely need a compiler and
tool set that supports Win32. In particular, older versions of DJGPP
can build only 32-bit MSDOS programs; that is, programs that use a DOS
extender to get a 32-bit address space and do not make any Windows
calls. The latest versions of DJGPP are said to be able to build Win32
programs when used with the proper extension package(s), but this is
not known to work with WinBoard. Use Cygwin instead.
See also topic [C.16].
_________________________________________________________________
[B.19] How can I use XBoard or WinBoard to talk to an Internet Chess Server
through a firewall or proxy?
There is no single answer to this question, because there are many
different kinds of firewalls in use. They work in various different
ways and have various different security policies. This answer can
only provide hints.
Note that you can't access Internet Chess Servers through a Web proxy,
because they are not a Web service. You talk to them through a raw TCP
connection, not an HTTP connection. If you can only access the Web
through a proxy, there may be a firewall that stops you from making
direct TCP connections, but there may also be a way through it. Read
on for hints, and contact your local system administrator if you need
more information about your local configuration.
A helpful user mailed me the following explanation of how to use
WinBoard with WinGate:
"I have managed to setup WinBoard though my WinGate proxy. I have
the Office version. What I needed to do was to setup the TCP/IP
connection to add the User/Host name and my provider service name
for the DNS, but I had to leave the HOST IP address blank. I have
not played with all the variations, so it may be just that I have
the DNS lookup enabled."
I hope this helps, though I don't find it very clear. I don't have a
copy of WinGate myself and can't help if you have questions about it.
If you are using some other non-SOCKS firewall, read the FIREWALLS
section in your XBoard or WinBoard documentation (man page, info
document, or Help file). If you can telnet to a chess server in some
way, then you can almost certainly connect to it with xboard/WinBoard,
though in some cases you may not be able to run timestamp or timeseal.
The timestamp and timeseal protocols require a clean, 8-bit wide TCP
connection from your machine to the ICS, which some firewalls do not
provide.
If you have a SOCKS firewall and are using XBoard, you should be able
to SOCKSify xboard and use it. See http://www.socks.nec.com/ for
information about SOCKS and socksification. However, if you do this,
you can't use timestamp or timeseal; what you really need is a
socksified version of timestamp or timeseal. This is hard because the
source code for timestamp and timeseal is proprietary; the folks
running the chess servers don't give it out because that would make it
too easy to cheat. On some versions of Unix, you may be able to
socksify a program that you don't have the source code to by running
it with an appropriate dynamic library; see http://www.socks.nec.com/.
For others, you might be able to get a pre-built socksified version
from the chess server administrators. For timeseal versions, see
ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/timeseal/. For timestamp versions,
the directory would be ftp://ftp.chessclub.com/pub/icc/timestamp/, but
at this writing there don't seem to be any socksified timestamps
there. Once you have a socksified timestamp or timeseal, simply run it
with a normal, non-socksified xboard in place of the standard
timestamp or timeseal.
If you have a SOCKS firewall and you are using WinBoard, we now know
how to make this configuration work, complete with timestamp or
timeseal!
Start by getting SocksCap32. This software is freely available from
http://www.socks.nec.com/. Install it on your machine, read the
documentation, and learn to use it. You may find it useful with many
other programs besides WinBoard.
Next, don't socksify WinBoard. Socksifying WinBoard itself doesn't let
you use it with timestamp or timeseal. For some reason I don't
understand -- something strange that SocksCap32 does -- the socksified
WinBoard runs but does nothing, and timestamp/timeseal runs all by
itself in its own window.
Instead, use the following workaround. Follow the instructions
exactly; don't try to skip steps or simplify things.
First, make SocksCap32 application profiles for timestamp and
timeseal. Use the following command lines in the SocksCap32 profiles.
Name the first profile "timestamp" and the second "timeseal".
"c:\program files\winboard\timestamp.exe" chessclub.com 5000 -p 5000
"c:\program files\winboard\timeseal.exe" freechess.org 5000 -p 5000
Second, run timestamp or timeseal by itself, socksified, using its
profile. This will open an unneeded, black window that will not
respond to typing. Minimize it to the task bar and ignore it. It will
go away when you exit from WinBoard.
Next, run WinBoard using the following command line. Make a shortcut
or type this command into an MS-DOS Prompt box. Don't run WinBoard
itself socksified, just run it directly.
"c:\program files\winboard.exe" /ics /icshost=localhost /icsport=5000
After you get this working, you can try getting the timestamp window
to auto-minimize by starting it from a shortcut instead of from the
SocksCap32 control window. As it says in the SocksCap32 help file, put
the following in the Target field of a shortcut's Properties page:
"c:\program files\sockscap32\sc32.exe" timestamp
Then select "Run: Minimized" on the same page. Do the same for
timeseal.
Another method that can work is to use a .bat file to start both
timestamp and WinBoard. It would look something like this:
REM --
REM -- icc.bat
REM -- Start timestamp under SocksCap32 and use WinBoard to connect to it.
REM -- The string "timestamp" refers to a SocksCap32 profile for timestamp.
REM -- Do not change it to the filename of the timestamp program!
REM --
start /minimized "c:\program files\sockscap32\sc32.exe" timestamp
cd "c:\program files\winboard"
winboard /ics /icshost=localhost /icsport=5000
This workaround has a problem if you want to run two copies of
WinBoard at once, talking to the same chess server twice (for
bughouse) or to two different chess servers. If you need to do that,
you will need to run a separate copy of timestamp with a different
port number for each connection. You'll need to make a second set of
profile entries with a different value after the -p flag (say, 5001)
and you'll need to change the WinBoard command line /icsport=5000 for
the second WinBoard to match.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.20] How can I use XBoard or WinBoard on chess.net with accuclock?
I believe chess.net provides a Win32 command-line version of accuclock
that will work with WinBoard. Please see the documentation on the
chess.net server itself; don't ask the author of WinBoard.
I don't know whether chess.net provides versions of accuclock for Unix
at this time. Ask them.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.21] Can I get Zippy to do one or more ICS commands automatically at the
start or end of each game?
By default, Zippy automatically sends the command "gameend" to ICS at
the end of each game. You can alias this command (using the ICS
"alias" feature) to anything you want. On ICC, you can use the "multi"
feature to alias gameend to several commands, but other servers don't
have that feature. Zippy doesn't send anything at the start of the
game by default.
You can get Zippy to send one or more commands of your choosing, at
the start and/or end of each game, by using the -zippyGameStart and
-zippyGameEnd command line options, newly added in version 4.0.3. Both
xboard and WinBoard have (somewhat obscure) ways of getting newlines
into this option to send several commands. Here is an example of one
way to do it for each.
xboard -ics -zp -xrm '*zippyGameStart: say hi\nsay prepare to die\n'
WinBoard /ics /zp /zippyGameEnd='say thanks\nseek 5 0\nseek 2 12\n'
_________________________________________________________________
[B.22] How do I print from WinBoard?
WinBoard does not have built-in printing functionality. If you want to
print a picture of the board, press Alt+PrintScrn, run the standard
Windows application Paintbrush, select Paste, and print from there. If
you want to print a list of moves, save your game as a PGN file, then
open the PGN file with Notepad or any other plain text editor and
print it from there.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.23] Can I get Zippy to automatically reconnect to ICS when its connection
breaks?
There isn't a perfect solution to this problem yet, but a pretty good
one is to write a shell script (for xboard) or .bat script (for
WinBoard) that automatically restarts the program whenever it exits.
Use the -xexit flag so that you don't get a popup dialog that must be
dismissed with the OK button before the program will exit. The gap in
this solution is that your connection to ICS can sometimes get into a
state where the program does not notice that the connection is broken
until the next time it tries to send a command. Perhaps some future
version of xboard/WinBoard will have an option to send a harmless
command every five minutes or so.
Anyway, here is a sample Windows .bat file that restarts WinBoard each
time it exits. Thanks to Jason Williamson. It assumes that you have
put your computer account's name and password in a file named
logon.ini.
REM --
REM -- wbrecon.bat
REM -- Start WinBoard in Zippy mode, and restart it each time it exits.
REM -- Add or change parameters as needed for your application.
REM --
:loop
start /w winboard /zp /ics /icslogon logon.ini /xexit /xautoraise
REM -- The next line is to have a short delay setup for 139 seconds.
REM -- Leave it out if it doesn't work on the version of Windows you use.
TYPE NUL | CHOICE.COM /N /CY /TY,99 >NUL
goto loop
Here is a Unix shell script to do the same thing for xboard. It's a
bit more elaborate. It is based on the script I use for the original
Zippy. It logs all ICS output to a file named zippy.out, and it lets
you type commands to Zippy by running "cat > zippy.fifo".
#! /bin/sh
host="204.178.125.65 -icsport 5000 -telnet -telnetProgram timestamp"
#host="164.58.253.13 -icsport 5000 -telnet -telnetProgram timeseal"
out=zippy.out
fifo=zippy.fifo
ZIPPYPASSWORD='something'
export ZIPPYPASSWORD
ZIPPYPASSWORD2='orother'
export ZIPPYPASSWORD2
ZIPPYLINES=`pwd`/all.lines
export ZIPPYLINES
ZIPPYGAMEEND='say Yow, that was FUN!
gameend'
export ZIPPYGAMEEND
zippylogon=`pwd`/logon.ini
DISPLAY=`hostname`:0.0
export DISPLAY
mv -f $out ${out}.old
rm -f $fifo
mkfifo $fifo
pid=$$
( while [ true ] ; do cat -u $fifo ; done ) | \
( while [ true ] ; do
xboard -iconic -ics -icshost $host \
-zt -zp -xbell -xanimate \
-xautosave -xquiet -fcp "gnuchessx -h" \
-icslogon $zippylogon -xexit -autoflag -xautoraise $*
sleep 600
done ) > $out 2>&1 &
_________________________________________________________________
[B.24] The chess engines are too strong and always beat me. How can I adjust
the difficulty level to make them weaker?
The simplest way to get that effect is to make sure the
XBoard/WinBoard Auto Flag option is off, set a very fast time control
so that the chess engine can't think for long, but take as much time
over your own moves as you want. Also feel free to use Retract Move if
you make a blunder.
Many chess coaches will let you switch sides after they get a stronger
position so that you can get experience playing positions where you
are winning. You can try this with XBoard/WinBoard by using the
Machine White or Machine Black menu command to make the machine take
over your position.
The -depth command-line option to XBoard/WinBoard can also be used to
weaken the engine (see the man page or Help file). It's a bit of a
nuisance to set command line options in Windows, but see topic [C.7]
for instructions.
Other ways of weakening engines are engine-specific. Many of them let
you adjust various parameters, and if you choose bad settings, the
engine will play more poorly. Consult whatever documentation came with
the engine you are using.
_________________________________________________________________
[B.25] May I use the piece bitmaps from XBoard/WinBoard in my own program?
The piece bitmaps used in XBoard and WinBoard were designed by Elmar
Bartel. He released them under the GNU General Public License. This
means that if your program is also free software distributed under the
GPL, you can use them freely. If your program is distributed under
some other license, including commercial, shareware, or non-GPL
freeware, then you cannot use the bitmaps unless you obtain special
permission from Elmar. See the file README.bitmaps that comes with the
XBoard and WinBoard source code for more information and an email
address you can write to.
_________________________________________________________________
[C] XBoard and WinBoard, bugs and problems
_________________________________________________________________
[C.1] I can't build XBoard because the X11/Xaw/... include files are not
found.
These are the header files for the Athena Widgets library, which
XBoard uses heavily. Some versions of Unix don't supply these files,
but they are part of the standard X distribution, freely available
from MIT.
For general information on getting missing X sources, see the FAQ on
comp.windows.x. Note that you may be missing only the header files, or
you may be missing the libraries themselves too.
HP-UX users are missing only the header files. You can get them by
anonymous FTP as follows. (But first check with your system
administrator to see if someone else at your site has already done
this.) Get the archive file /hpux9/X11R5/Core/Xaw-5.00.tar.gz (Xaw
header files) via anonymous FTP from the site hpux.csc.liv.ac.uk
(138.253.42.172), or one of the other official sites---Germany:
hpux.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de (129.13.200.57), US: hpux.cae.wisc.edu
(144.92.4.15), France: hpux.cict.fr (192.70.79.53) or Netherlands:
hpux.ced.tudelft.nl (130.161.140.100). Unpack the archive using gzip
and follow the instructions in its README and/or HPUX.Install files.
Thanks to Richard Lloyd for this information.
If you have the Xaw header files installed in a different place than
the other X11 headers, you may need to configure XBoard with an extra
flag to help it find them. For example, if yours are in
/foo/bar/X11/Xaw, try this:
rm config.cache
(setenv CFLAGS -I/foo/bar ; configure)
Also see topic [C.2].
_________________________________________________________________
[C.2] Configuring or building XBoard fails due to missing header files,
missing libraries, or undefined symbols.
Perhaps you have the X server and client programs installed on your
machine, but not the X header files and link-time libraries. If so,
you can run existing X programs, but you cannot compile a new X
program from source code. In this case the XBoard configure script
will fail and will tell you to look at this question in the FAQ. Many
GNU/Linux distributions put the headers and libraries in a separate
package, which you might not have installed. If you are using RedHat,
install the XFree86-devel package. If you are using some other kind of
Unix, ask your system administrator where to find the X header files
and link-time libraries. If this is not your problem, read on.
The configure script for XBoard looks for X libraries and header files
in some common places. Sometimes it fails: If yours are installed in
an odd place, it may not find them at all. If you have more than one
version of X installed on your system, it may find the "wrong" one, or
occasionally it may find libraries from one version and incompatible
header files from another. You can work around these problems by
telling the configure script where the files are. For example:
configure --x-includes=/odd/place/include \
--x-libraries=/odd/place/lib
The directory named in the argument to --x-includes must have a
subdirectory "X11" that contains the actual .h files. That is, if your
X.h file has full pathname /odd/place/X11R6/include/X11/X.h, then you
must give the argument --x-includes=/odd/place/X11R6/include.
Some linkers have bugs that cause bogus error messages when you try to
link X programs. The configure script includes a workaround for a bug
of this kind that exists in some SunOS 4.x.x installations. See the
FAQ on comp.windows.x for more information about problems of this
kind.
If all else fails, check whether anyone else at your site has been
able to compile any X programs on your system. Your X installation
might be buggy. If so, the system administrator at your site might
know how to fix or work around the problem.
Also see topic [C.1].
_________________________________________________________________
[C.3] I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with a modem. I'm not running
SLIP or PPP, but just dialing in to an ordinary login account ("shell
account").
Here are solutions to some common problems in this area.
Some people want to connect to ICS through HyperTerminal or some other
terminal program first, then run WinBoard. This is not how it works.
WinBoard wants to talk directly with your modem, acting as a terminal
program itself. Start out with the modem "on hook" (not making a
call).
Run WinBoard with a command line like this (adding more options if
desired):
WinBoard /ics /icscom com1
Use com2, com3, or com4 in place of com1 if your modem is connected to
one of those ports.
After you start WinBoard, you may need to change some of the options
in the Communications dialog (on the Options menu). The dialog has the
usual options for talking to modems: bits per second, bits per byte,
parity, number of stop bits. You will probably want to use Save
Settings Now when you're done.
Next, type dialing commands to your modem in the text window that
WinBoard creates. You may need to turn off Local Line Editing on the
Options menu while you are typing commands to your modem. Turn it back
on when you're done. See the WinBoard Help file for instructions if
you see your typing echoed an extra time after you hit Enter.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.4] I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with Windows 95 and SLIP or PPP.
When trying to start up, it gets the error "Address family not supported by
protocol family" (or some equally strange message).
WinBoard is a 32-bit application, but some Winsock (TCP/IP)
implementations support only 16-bit applications. You get a strange
looking error message if you try to use a 32-bit application because
there is no standard Winsock error code number for "32-bit application
not supported."
Microsoft TCP/IP works with both 16-bit and 32-bit applications,
supports SLIP, PPP, Ethernet, etc., and is included with Windows 95
and later Windows systems. If possible, I recommend that you uninstall
whatever Winsock you are using and install Microsoft TCP/IP instead.
For more information, see http://walden.mo.net/~rymabry/95winfaq.html
(the Win95-L FAQ).
Trumpet Winsock 2.1 (and earlier) supports only 16-bit applications,
and hence does not work with WinBoard. But there is a beta-test
release available that does support 32-bit applications. I have not
tried it with WinBoard, but it should work. See Trumpet's Web page
http://www.trumpet.com.au/wsk/winsock.htm for more information.
The 16-bit versions of America On-Line's software do not support
32-bit Winsock applications. Get the 32-bit version. At one time the
32-bit version was called "AOL for Windows 95," but I imagine that has
changed. Hopefully the current versions are all 32-bit.
A few versions of Winsock may have bugs that prevent Windows
timestamp/timeseal from working with them. I'm not sure if such bugs
exist in any versions that actually have 32-bit support, so this point
might be moot. Again, Microsoft TCP/IP is known to work.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.5] When I try to run WinBoard, I get the message "Failed to start chess
program gnuchess on localhost: NO LANGFILE (file gnuchess.lan not found)".
This message means that WinBoard is trying to run GNU Chess, but GNU
Chess cannot find a file that it needs, named gnuchess.lan. If you see
it, you've probably customized WinBoard's /fcp, /fd, /scp, and/or /sd
options and made a mistake in the process. Review what you did, and
see the WinBoard help file.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.6] I want to use XBoard or WinBoard as an Internet Chess Server interface,
but the ICS Client option is grayed out on the menu.
XBoard and WinBoard have three major modes that can't be changed from
the menus: local chess engine mode, ICS mode, and standalone mode.
With XBoard, you have to set the mode using command-line options.
Local chess engine mode is the default, -ics selects ICS mode, and
-ncp ("no chess program") selects standalone mode.
With WinBoard, if you don't set the mode using command-line options,
you get a dialog box asking which mode you want. To bypass the dialog
box, use -cp ("chess program") for local chess engine mode, or -ics or
-ncp as with XBoard. Also see topic [C.7].
_________________________________________________________________
[C.7] How do I give command-line options to a Windows program like WinBoard?
There are many ways; pick your favorite:
* Type the command line into an MS-DOS Prompt box. Example:
"WinBoard -ics".
* Make a Windows shortcut for WinBoard. You can do this by
right-dragging WinBoard.exe to the desktop and selecting "Create
Shortcut(s) Here" from the menu that appears. Right-click on the
shortcut, select Properties, and click the Shortcut tab. The
command-line text box is labelled "Target" instead of "Command
line" just to confuse you. Edit the text in this box, adding the
command line options to the end.
* Choose Run from the Start menu, or File / Run from the Program
Manager or File Manager, and type the command line into the dialog
you get. You may have to give WinBoard's full drivespec and
filename if it is not in a directory on your search path.
* Make a Program Manager icon for WinBoard. You can do this by
dragging WinBoard.exe from the File Manager into the Program
Manager, or by using File / New in the Program Manager. Select the
icon and choose File / Properties. Edit the Command Line text box
to add the command-line options to the end.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.9] When I exit from WinBoard after using it to play against a chess
program on my machine, the chess program keeps running in the background.
Be sure you have the current versions of WinBoard and the chess engine
you are using. WinBoard 3.4.1 and earlier had a bug that caused this
problem to occur with all chess engines. A buggy chess engine that
does not respond to the "quit" command will also cause this.
If you still see this problem, you can stop the rogue chess engine by
pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, selecting the chess engine process from the
menu, and pressing the End Task button.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.12] Why do my ICS opponents often get extra time after they make their
moves? Why do I sometimes lose time off my clock after I make my move?
If you are playing with the ICS incremental clock, both you and your
opponent get a set amount of extra time after each move.
If your or your opponent has netlag, your opponent might appear to get
extra time, especially if your opponent is using timestamp or
timeseal. The ICS charges each player who is using timestamp or
timeseal only for the time between when the player received his
opponent's move and the time he sent his own move. Thus delays in
network transmission do not count against either player. But WinBoard
counts down the display of your opponent's clock on your screen under
the assumption that there is no netlag. When his move comes in, if
there was netlag, the ICS may not have really charged him for that
much time, and WinBoard corrects the clock to what the ICS says it
should read.
If you are not using timestamp or timeseal, you may appear to lose
time off your clock at some point after you make your move. In this
case, the ICS charges you for the time between when it sent you your
opponent's move and the time it received your move. Thus delays in
network transmission count against you. WinBoard stops counting down
the display of your clock on your screen (and starts your opponent's)
when you make your move. When the ICS echoes your move back to you, it
may have charged you for more time than that, and WinBoard corrects
the clocks to what the ICS says they should read.
See "help lag" and "help timestamp" or "help timeseal" on your ICS for
more detailed information.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.13] I can't run WinBoard unless I delete the WinBoard.ini file each time!
Most people don't have this problem, but two or three people using
Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or 4 have reported it. I have no
idea what causes this problem. Contrary to what was reported in a
previous version of this FAQ, reinstalling the service pack after
installing WinBoard does not seem to solve the problem.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.15] I get errors compiling XBoard's parser.c.
The file parser.c is automatically generated from parser.l. The copy
included with XBoard 4.0.2 was generated by lex on Tru64 Unix and has
problems compiling and linking on current GNU/Linux versions. The copy
included with XBoard 4.0.3 was generated by flex on a GNU/Linux
machine, but it too won't necessarily work on other versions of Unix.
If you have this problem, you can fix it by deleting parser.c and
letting the Makefile re-create it from parser.l. This will work if you
have either lex or flex on your system. Flex is available in all
GNU/Linux distributions and can be obtained at no charge from the Free
Software Foundation, www.fsf.org.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.16] I get an error building WinBoard from source because "flex" is not
found.
The file parser.c is automatically generated from parser.l. The
Makefile included with the WinBoard source kit has a rule for
generating parser.c using the program "flex", which will fail if you
don't have flex. However, the source kit also includes a ready-made
copy of parser.c, so you don't really need flex unless you have made
changes to parser.l. Check that you still have a copy of parser.c; if
you don't, unpack the WinBoard source zip file again to get one.
Either set the last-modified time of parser.c to be later than that of
parser.l, delete parser.l, or comment out the Makefile rule for
building parser.c from parser.l, and then try building WinBoard again.
If you do want to change parser.l and rebuild parser.c, you can get
flex as part of the free Cygwin kit from
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/. You can probably also get flex
for Windows by itself from various other places around the Internet.
It is free software distributed by the Free Software Foundation,
www.fsf.org.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.17] XBoard hangs shortly after connecting to an ICS when used with dxterm,
cmdtool, dtterm, kterm, konsole, or other substitutes for xterm.
After connecting to a chess server, XBoard 4.0.2 and later sends an
escape sequence to its terminal that is meant to display your handle
and the ICS host name (for example, "user@chessclub.com") in the
terminal's banner and icon. It seems that several of the alternative X
terminal programs have a bug that makes them hang when sent this
escape sequence.
You can work around the problem by using xterm, nxterm, rxvt, aterm,
xiterm, or gnome-terminal, all of which seem to work fine. In fact,
current versions of kterm and konsole seem to work fine too, so if you
are having problems with one of them, be sure you are not running an
outdated version.
Alternatively, you can disable this feature by commenting out the body
of DisplayIcsInteractionTitle in xboard.c and recompling xboard.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.18] The WinBoard pieces show up in the wrong colors, appear distorted, or
are not visible at all.
This can happen if you have a bug in your Windows display driver.
Check with the manufacturer of your display card, the manufacturer of
your computer, or Microsoft to see if there is an updated driver
available. You can usually download updated drivers from the Web.
If you can't find an updated driver, you can try running Windows using
a different number of colors and/or disabling some of the hardware
acceleration features on your display card. To change the number of
colors, go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display /
Settings / Color Palette. To disable hardware acceleration features,
go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings /
Advanced Properties / Performance / Hardware Acceleration.
It's also possible that Windows has the right driver for your hardware
already but you are not using it. It may help to reinstall your
driver. Go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / System and
delete your display card (maybe even your monitor too), then reboot.
Windows should automatically re-detect your card and monitor and
re-install the drivers; if it doesn't, run Start / Settings / Control
Panel / Add New Hardware to force it to.
If all else fails, try Monochrome mode. On WinBoard's menus, go to
Options / Color and check Monochrome. WinBoard will display in black
and white.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.19] XBoard or WinBoard tells me "Error: first chess program (...) exited
unexpectedly".
This message means that your chess engine crashed, probably due to a
bug in the engine, or because you have it configured incorrectly. You
can try running XBoard or WinBoard again with the "-debug" flag on the
command line. This will print out all the messages received from the
chess engine. (With WinBoard, the messages go into a file called
WinBoard.debug; with XBoard, they go to the xterm that you started
XBoard from.)
If you are using GNU Chess and you see this problem as soon as it
starts up, most likely GNU Chess is exiting with an error message. If
you see the message "NO LANGFILE", it means that you did not install
GNU Chess correctly, and it is unable to find the file gnuchess.lang.
Make sure that you defined LIBDIR in the gnuchess Makefile, and that
gnuchess.lang is in that directory. If gnuchess.lang is not there, you
probably didn't type "make install" in the gnuchess src directory; you
must do this to install gnuchess.lang (and the gnuchess book). If you
defined LIBDIR to something that is not an absolute pathname (that is,
to something that does not start with a "/"), GNU Chess will work only
if you run it from the GNU Chess "src" directory where you built it.
_________________________________________________________________
[C.20] XBoard tells me "Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry", or "too few
colors available; trying monochrome mode", or "XPM pieces cannot be used in
monochrome mode".
You are running your X server with 8-bit color depth, and you are
running some program that has used up all 256 of your colors. Netscape
tends to do this, or maybe you have a background image that uses up
all of your colors.
If you have a modern machine, you probably have enough display memory
to run your X server with 16-, 24-, or 32-bit color depth. If you're
using "startx" to start the X server, try giving the command as
"startx -- -bpp 24" (or 16, or 32). On newer X servers you may have to
use -depth instead of -bpp. Further details on configuring your X
server are beyond the scope of this FAQ.
If you must run in 8-bit mode, try the following: Avoid background
images that use up all your colors. If you run Netscape, try starting
it up with the -install command-line option; this gives Netscape its
own private colormap that X will switch to when Netscape has the
keyboard focus.
If all else fails, another possibility is to run xboard in monochrome
(black and white) mode by giving it the -mono command-line option.
XBoard will try this by itself in some cases. Monochrome mode works
only with bitmap pieces, not pixmap pieces, so trying to use it may
give you the error "XPM pieces cannot be used in monochrome mode". To
get around this, either use the -bitmapDirectory command line option
to point XBoard to the directory containing the bitmap pieces included
with the XBoard source code, or rebuild XBoard with pixmap support
disabled, using "./configure --disable-xpm ; make clean ; make".
_________________________________________________________________
[C.21] When I log in to freechess.org, the Enter key doesn't work, and I have
to use Ctrl+J instead. But when I use WinBoard, Ctrl+J doesn't work either,
so I'm stuck.
This is a pretty rare problem. It should only arise if you have to
reach freechess.org by telnetting (or connecting with WinBoard
/icsport=23) from a Windows PC to a Unix box, and then telnetting from
there to freechess.org. The Enter key should always work when
connecting directly from your PC to freechess.org.
The best way to get around the problem is to run timeseal on the
intermediate Unix box instead of telnet. Get the appropriate version
of timeseal for your box from ftp.freechess.org and follow the
directions in the help files on FICS.
If you can't run timeseal for some reason, there are some things you
can do to make telnet stay in line mode instead of going to character
mode. Then the Enter key will work. First, try "telnet freechess.org
5000" instead of "telnet freechess.org." If that still doesn't work,
then when the Enter key stops working, type the following. Here < and
> surround the names of keys.
<Ctrl+S><Ctrl+]>mode line<Enter>
_________________________________________________________________
[C.22] XBoard says, "Failed to start first chess program gnuchessx on
localhost: gnuchessx: No such file or directory."
XBoard is looking for GNU Chess 4.0. If you didn't want to use XBoard
with GNU Chess, please see topic [C.6]. If you did want to use GNU
Chess 4.0, be sure you have it installed and that it is on your $PATH.
If you wanted to use GNU Chess 5 instead, see topic [D.6].
_________________________________________________________________
[D] Crafty and other topics
_________________________________________________________________
[D.1] What is XChess?
XChess is an older chessboard program that is no longer supported.
XChess was written for X version 10, and you may or may not be able to
build and run it on an X11 system.
XChess has only one significant feature that is not present in XBoard:
Two humans can play chess using XChess on different machines, without
using the Internet Chess Server as an intermediary. This feature is of
interest only if you don't have network connectivity to the Internet
Chess Server.
Note: There actually have been several different programs called
"XChess" in circulation at various times. The above describes one that
was associated with GNU Chess.
_________________________________________________________________
[D.2] What is Winsock Chess?
Winsock Chess is a program that lets two people play chess across a
network. It runs only under Microsoft Windows. Some of the code in
Winsock Chess is derived from GNU Chess, but it is not maintained by
the GNU Chess team. You can get a copy from the Internet Chess
Library; see topic [A.2]. For more information, contact its author,
Donald Munro, ccahdm@beluga.upe.ac.za.
_________________________________________________________________
[D.3] What is Crafty?
Crafty is a freely-available chess program written by Bob Hyatt. Bob
is the main author of the well-known chess program Cray Blitz. Crafty
is a very strong program, its code is available, commented and fairly
readable, and its author is actively working on improvements.
You can download Crafty from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/. Start
by getting the read.me file and reading it. Among other things, this
file contains instructions on how to install Crafty as a command-line
application on your machine.
There is a Crafty mailing list. To subscribe, send email to
majordomo@cis.uab.edu, with "subscribe crafty-list" in the body.
_________________________________________________________________
[D.4] How do I use Crafty with XBoard?
First, you need to get Crafty and install it as a command-line
application on your machine. See topic [D.3].
To use Crafty with XBoard, give the -fcp parameter like this:
xboard -fcp "./crafty" -fd crafty_directory
Here crafty_directory is the directory where you installed Crafty. You
can add more xboard options at the end of the command line.
Crafty 15.14 or later is required to work properly with XBoard 4.0.0
or later. We generally recommend using the latest versions of both
XBoard and Crafty.
_________________________________________________________________
[D.5] How do I use Crafty with WinBoard?
First, you need to get Crafty and install it as a command-line
application on your machine. See topic [D.3]. It is best to use the
latest version of Crafty with the latest version of WinBoard to make
sure all features are compatible and function correctly. You can
install Crafty in any directory you like.
You also need to get WinBoard and install it in the normal way using
its built-in installer. You can do that either before or after you
install Crafty.
After both Crafty and WinBoard are installed separately, follow the
directions in the WinBoard Help file (included with WinBoard) for
connecting new chess engines to WinBoard.
If you want to have Crafty act as an automated computer player on a
chess server, see topic [B.16]. Before you try to get that working, be
sure you can play against Crafty locally, first without WinBoard, then
with it. Also be sure you can use WinBoard to play on the chess server
yourself, without having Crafty connected to it. You have to crawl
before you can walk!
_________________________________________________________________
[D.6] How do I use GNU Chess 5 with XBoard?
By default, XBoard still tries to use GNU Chess 4 by running the
command "gnuchessx". That's why if you don't have GNU Chess 4, you get
the error message "Failed to start first chess program gnuchessx on
localhost: gnuchessx: No such file or directory."
If you have GNU Chess 5, the command should be "gnuchess xboard"
instead. To make XBoard use this command, give the -fcp parameter like
this:
xboard -fd gnuchess_directory -fcp "./gnuchess xboard"
Here gnuchess_directory is the directory where you installed GNU Chess
5 and its book. You can add more xboard options at the end of the
command line.
_________________________________________________________________
$Id: FAQ.html,v 2.2 2003/11/28 09:35:21 mann Exp $
** End of XBoard/WinBoard FAQ **
