Tin Mann & WinBoard/XBoard

[Ron Murawski]

I just noticed this today. If you go to Tim Mann's WinBoard/Xboard page
http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html
It says, "XBoard and WinBoard information has moved".
Then you get redirected here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/
where the only interest is XBoard, and none in WinBoard.

I looked here:
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/
and found this quote:
"XBoard runs on Unix and Unix-like systems that use the X Window System.
The project also includes a port to 32-bit Windows systems called WinBoard."

I looked around the site and found this WinBoard download directory:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/winboard/
but no corresponding WinBoard page.

Will HG's work ever be completely incorporated into the hopelessly outdated
'official' WinBoard/XBoard versions?

Ron

[F. Bluemers]

I just noticed this today. If you go to Tim Mann's WinBoard/Xboard page
http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html
It says, "XBoard and WinBoard information has moved".
Then you get redirected here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/
where the only interest is XBoard, and none in WinBoard.

I looked here:
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/
and found this quote:
"XBoard runs on Unix and Unix-like systems that use the X Window System.
The project also includes a port to 32-bit Windows systems called WinBoard."

I looked around the site and found this WinBoard download directory:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/winboard/
but no corresponding WinBoard page.

Will HG's work ever be completely incorporated into the hopelessly outdated
'official' WinBoard/XBoard versions?

Ron

Seems to me they are working on it:
http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=5812

At the moment H.G. and myself (H.G. is really doing all the work here) are working on getting those changes back into Savannah which will then lead to a new version: 4.4.0 with tons of new features...

Sounds good to me

[Ron Murawski]

Thanks, Fonzy!

I missed that post.

Ron

[H.G.Muller]

Indeed, we are working on a "reverse takeover".

In fact the work on the source for 4.4.0 is practically done; in the source repository there is already a version tagged as 4.4.0-alpha8, which is very likely to become the final 4.4.0 beta release. (Except that we fixed some misspellings in the docs, and that I still want to replace the winboard.c source file by one that contains a few dummy macros to indicate insertion points for the JAWS code (needed in the speaking WB version for te blind), which would not affect the compiled winboard.exe if the JAWS code is not present in jaws.c.

I also have already composed a new "Gold Pack" for 4.4.0, to be used as a WinBoard executable release. But we really would like to make this release in te form of an installer, so that included fonts automatically go were they belong, and some parts can be made optional. (Not everyone is interested in Xiangqi, for instance, and PSWBTM is of no use to people that merely want to use WB to play on an ICS.) I have zero knowledge on making Windows installers, though, and Arun (the only remaining active official membr of the GNU-Savannah team) is a 100% Linux man, so I am dependent on someone to make it for us.

For the Linux binary release we have contacted Debian; they already have forged 4.4.0-alpha6 into a package for their "sid" unstable distribution, which revealed some problems tat triggered most of the development from alpha6 to alpha8.

We still have to work on improving the web pages for WinBoard at the GNU site, though. The idea was that Tim's pages would not be completely taken down; just that people should be directed to the GNU site first, and that from there they can still reach Tim's pages, after having read the warning that the info there might be 5 years out-of-date, plus links to the recent stuff. But we postponed that until after the release of 4.4.0.

[Tim Mann]

Hi, guys. As you probably know, I've been doing practically nothing on chess for years. I've been happy to see H.G. and Arun take over the "official" project and merge in the fork that H.G. and others have worked on to become the main line. Moving the official project pages to be at gnu.org instead of my personal web site has been long overdue and is finally starting to happen this week. As you saw, there is a basic page at the gnu.org site now, and my old xboard page redirects to it. I've also been working on deleting or updating other outdated info on my pages. The pages at gnu.org will be expanded in the future.

About the name issue that was queried in the first post in this thread: XBoard is the original program and has always been the primary name of the project. It gets special emphasis on the GNU pages because GNU is about building a completely free software environment, including a free operating system. So from the GNU point of view, XBoard is primary and WinBoard is just a port of XBoard to Windows. Of course, WinBoard has been the tail that wags the dog much of the time since Windows has a much larger user community, and also since XBoard has lagged behind WinBoard in some features because they don't share enough code.

Arun has some ambition to work on a new version of XBoard using GTK+ instead of the tired old Athena widgets that are currently used. A cool side effect of this is that almost exactly the same code should be able to run on Windows, since GTK+ exists for Windows. I'm definitely not going to promise when and if this will happen, especially since I won't be doing the work! Just thought it would be interesting to mention.

By the way, the Tin Man was a character in the Wizard of Oz. Tim Mann is my name.

[Ron Murawski]

By the way, the Tin Man was a character in the Wizard of Oz. Tim Mann is my name.

I'm glad you put up a happy face after that remark. Nevertheless I apologize for the typo. I guess that makes me the scarecrow without a brain!

It's wonderful news that the various improvements will be unified into a single official website along with downloads.

Ron

[Roger Brown]

Hi, guys. As you probably know, I've been doing practically nothing on chess for years. I've been happy to see H.G. and Arun take over the "official" project and merge in the fork that H.G. and others have worked on to become the main line. Moving the official project pages to be at gnu.org instead of my personal web site has been long overdue and is finally starting to happen this week. As you saw, there is a basic page at the gnu.org site now, and my old xboard page redirects to it. I've also been working on deleting or updating other outdated info on my pages. The pages at gnu.org will be expanded in the future.

About the name issue that was queried in the first post in this thread: XBoard is the original program and has always been the primary name of the project. It gets special emphasis on the GNU pages because GNU is about building a completely free software environment, including a free operating system. So from the GNU point of view, XBoard is primary and WinBoard is just a port of XBoard to Windows. Of course, WinBoard has been the tail that wags the dog much of the time since Windows has a much larger user community, and also since XBoard has lagged behind WinBoard in some features because they don't share enough code.

Arun has some ambition to work on a new version of XBoard using GTK+ instead of the tired old Athena widgets that are currently used. A cool side effect of this is that almost exactly the same code should be able to run on Windows, since GTK+ exists for Windows. I'm definitely not going to promise when and if this will happen, especially since I won't be doing the work! Just thought it would be interesting to mention.

By the way, the Tin Man was a character in the Wizard of Oz. Tim Mann is my name.

Hello Tim Mann,

Sorry to gush but may I say that it is a pleasure reading a post from you.

H.G. has been working like a ..... to improve and expand the use of Winboard and Xboard throughout the chess universe.

Thank you for your invention all those years ago.

All those hours of joy you have given me and others......

Thanks Man(n)!

Later.

[Olivier Deville]

Hi Roger

I certainly second this.

Tim, this forum is your home

Olivier (the happy owner)

[Charles Browne]

....In fact the work on the source for 4.4.0 is practically done; in the source repository there is already a version tagged as 4.4.0-alpha8...

Not important enough to get caught up in a long thread about, especially not here.

...but I thought I'd let you know that this 4.4.0-alpha8 Winboard does not compile due to compiler errors. Could be the Cygwin compiler version being used I suppose.

[H.G.Muller]

Good that you mention this!

Apparently I forgot to send Arun one of the source files I changed. One that is only used in WinBoard, so he did not notice it.

Arun is incommunicado for the coming week, so this omission will not be corrected soon. For those that want to compile
before that:

What is wrong is that in the file wedittags.c on a line that contains "EnsureOnScreen", a ")" should be changed into ",0,0)".
Then it should compile without problems. (Just two warnings in parser.c.) A working execuatble can also be downloaded from my website.

[H.G.Muller]

Please note that there also is a new makefile; the make procedure under Cygwin or Mingw now is:

make -f makefile.gcc

For MSVC there is makefile.ms

[Roger Brown]

Good that you mention this!

Apparently I forgot to send Arun one of the source files I changed. One that is only used in WinBoard, so he did not notice it.

Arun is incommunicado for the coming week, so this omission will not be corrected soon. For those that want to compile
before that:

What is wrong is that in the file wedittags.c on a line that contains "EnsureOnScreen", a ")" should be changed into ",0,0)".
Then it should compile without problems. (Just two warnings in parser.c.) A working execuatble can also be downloaded from my website.

Hello H.G.

Is this the alpha.tst link that you have or there a different version somewhere?

Should it be different, would a link be possible?

Thanks.

[Charles Browne]

Please note that there also is a new makefile; the make procedure under Cygwin or Mingw now is:

make -f makefile.gcc

For MSVC there is makefile.ms

ok, it compiled

other than the two warnings you mentioned for parser.c, there were also some warnings for wlayout.c.

An error message was received regarding the help file but remembering something rigao had mentioned in another thread fixed it.

Code: Select all

# Update the help file if necessary
$(PROJ).hlp : $(PROJ).rtf
   $(HC) $(PROJ).hpj
   @cat $(PROJ).err
   @mv $(PROJ).hlp tmp.hlp
   @mv tmp.hlp $(PROJ).hlp # these moves to get the case right


Commenting out the lines in the makefile shown above so that they looked like what is shown below fixed it, in addition to adding the help file to the winboard folder.

Code: Select all

# Update the help file if necessary
#$(PROJ).hlp : $(PROJ).rtf
#   $(HC) $(PROJ).hpj
#   @cat $(PROJ).err
   @mv $(PROJ).hlp tmp.hlp
   @mv tmp.hlp $(PROJ).hlp # these moves to get the case right


The additional two lines not commented out above didn't seem to cause any problem if they were or were not commented out.

You will have to judge for accuracy.



btw, People are going to love you now that the Winboard windows remember their prior settings when the program is opened again. No more disjointed windows upon opening the program.

Gotta go.

[H.G.Muller]

Indeed, building the help file requires the MicroSoft Help Studio to be on your system, and for most people, it is not. The kind of.hlp files it builds do not work in Vista anyway, unless you load additional software. Quoting out the lines wil prevent the error, but no .hlp file will be built. Another way would be to copy the winboard.hlp from another WinBoard there.

I am also happy I could fix the -stickyWindows feature. It had suddenly stopped working on XP and Vista, on my Win2k it has aways been OK. The problem turned out to be that a certain Windows API call at the point where moving a window is concluded was reporting the window position from before the move in Win2k, but for after the move in XP and Vista. I now avoid to use that call, so it should work on all Windows versions now. I also added stickyness w.r.t. sizing of the main window, and included the Game List and ICS Interaction with the windows that stick.

Btw, what warning do you get on wlayout.c?

[Charles Browne]

Btw, what warning do you get on wlayout.c?

Code: Select all

windres --use-temp-file --include-dir .. winboard.rc -O coff -o wbres.o
 wclipbrd.c
 wedittags.c
 wengineo.c
 wevalgraph.c
 wgamelist.c
 whistory.c
 winboard.c
 wlayout.c
wlayout.c: In function `ReattachAfterSize':
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 3)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 4)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 5)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 6)
 woptions.c
 wsnap.c
 wsockerr.c
gcc  backend.o book.o gamelist.o lists.o moves.o pgntags.o uci.o zippy.o parser.
o wbres.o wclipbrd.o wedittags.o wengineo.o wevalgraph.o wgamelist.o whistory.o
winboard.o wlayout.o woptions.o wsnap.o wsockerr.o -mno-cygwin -lmsvcrt -DNDEBUG
 -fpic -s -mwindows -lwsock32 -lwinmm -lcomctl32 -o winboard.exe


[Tim Mann]

Indeed, building the help file requires the MicroSoft Help Studio to be on your system, and for most people, it is not. The kind of.hlp files it builds do not work in Vista anyway, unless you load additional software.

Seems like it would be a good idea to convert the help file to a plain .html file and just have the Help menu open it in a web browser.

BTW, you could always register in Savannah and then be able to upload changes there yourself when Arun isn't around. Just saying.

[Marountas John]

Hello Tim Mann,

Sorry to gush but may I say that it is a pleasure reading a post from you.

H.G. has been working like a ..... to improve and expand the use of Winboard and Xboard throughout the chess universe.

Thank you for your invention all those years ago.

All those hours of joy you have given me and others......

Thanks Man(n)!

Later.

My gratitude to Mr Tim Mann as well for his work all these years. Thank you sir !
Good luck to the continuer!!

[Eric Mullins]

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in one of my emails. Anyway, since the problem has actually cropped up, I'll mention it again.

Just include a prebuilt hlp file in that directory so that make won't try use that rule.

the lzma compressor in the installation ought to recognize duplicate hlp files, and so incur no extra space for the identicle file in the source tree.

[Charles Browne]

Just include a prebuilt hlp file in that directory so that make won't try use that rule.

H.G. Muller stated that below. Bold texted by me.

Indeed, building the help file requires the MicroSoft Help Studio to be on your system, and for most people, it is not. The kind of.hlp files it builds do not work in Vista anyway, unless you load additional software. Quoting out the lines wil prevent the error, but no .hlp file will be built. Another way would be to copy the winboard.hlp from another WinBoard there.

Now...For me anyway to compile to an executable file requires me to put a .hlp file in the winboard directory where the source codes are (I just used a copy of the original winboard hlp file I had in my Winboard programs folder) and to comment out the lines noted in a post above.


I stated as much here.

Commenting out the lines in the makefile shown above so that they looked like what is shown below fixed it, in addition to adding the help file to the winboard folder.

Below is shown what I get if I just put the hlp file in the winboard source files directory without commenting out the lines in the makefile.

Code: Select all

windres --use-temp-file --include-dir .. winboard.rc -O coff -o wbres.o
 wclipbrd.c
 wedittags.c
 wengineo.c
 wevalgraph.c
 wgamelist.c
 whistory.c
 winboard.c
 wlayout.c
wlayout.c: In function `ReattachAfterSize':
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 3)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 4)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 5)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 6)
 woptions.c
 wsnap.c
 wsockerr.c
"C:/Program Files/Help Workshop/hcrtf" -xn winboard.hpj
/bin/sh: C:/Program Files/Help Workshop/hcrtf: No such file or directory
make: *** [winboard.hlp] Error 127


It could very well be an operating system issue(?), if others are able to compile by just including the hlp file without commenting out the lines?

[Charles Browne]

Below is what I get if I comment out the lines in the makefile but do not include the hlp file in the winboard source files directory.

Code: Select all

windres --use-temp-file --include-dir .. winboard.rc -O coff -o wbres.o
 wclipbrd.c
 wedittags.c
 wengineo.c
 wevalgraph.c
 wgamelist.c
 whistory.c
 winboard.c
 wlayout.c
wlayout.c: In function `ReattachAfterSize':
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 3)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 4)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 5)
wlayout.c:167: warning: int format, LONG arg (arg 6)
 woptions.c
 wsnap.c
 wsockerr.c
make: *** No rule to make target `winboard.hlp', needed by `winboard.exe'.  Stop
.

admin@newer /cygdrive/c/00/winboard
$


For me it took doing both, including the hlp file and commenting out the lines.