Winboard start up issues

[Roger Brown]

Hi. I am not a programmer but am a user of Winboard, my absolute all time favorite interface. I have changed the winboard.ini settings to get something like Thief which I just love - don't have that white background in the console glaring at me at night, heh heh. Anyway, in trying to help a friend I messed myself up. Now I am getting a pesky Startup Dialog box which I would just love to eliminate. Any suggestions? Thanks! I don't think it was in the Winboard 4.4.2 edition if that is still downloadable somewhere. PS I use the interface to connect to FICS and to play rated standard games and to view other rated standard games. Thanks.

Hello H.G.,

I got this in my inbox today.

Can you help at all?

Later.

[H.G.Muller]

Hard to say what is wrong. For one, you will always get the startup dialog if you start the bare executable (or use the menu irtem for it), that is not something you would arrange differently in the winboard.ini file. To prevent it you have to start with extra command-line options for giving the engines or ICS, and usually that is done in a script or shortcut.

It could be that he damaged the command line in the short-cut, but he doesn't say which shortcut he is using. In the install I supply shortcuts (in the WInBoard folder, and in the start menu) which use a single dedicated ini file as option (e.g. "winboard.exe @FICS.ini") All the settings you need to suppress the startup dialog and gconnect to FICS are then in the FICS.ini file. Problem is that on some recent Windows versions you won't see the "@FICS.ini" when you open the shotrtcut with "properties". Somehow it ignores anything starting with "@", and if you then change something in that line, and save, you lose it.

[EdCollins]

H.G., your last two sentences explains a lot. I thought I was finally starting to lose it. Thanks.

[Josh Pettus]

Thats why I sometimes prefer .bat files myself to actual shortcuts.

[H.G.Muller]

Is it known why Windows shortcuts behave in such a sick way w.r.t. the @ sign? That makes it very confusing, and I even considered to provide an alternative symbol or option name to avoid it. Is it a Windows bug?

[matematiko]

The only way I start WinBoard is by shortcuts....shortcuts which its content I've been saving for years

Regards

[Tony Hecker]

I've also found the "@ sign in shortcut properties" problem to be annoying, because I can't see what the installer supplied shortcuts are doing. Will a future WinBoard installer version create shortcuts without using @?

[H.G.Muller]

Then I would first have to provide an alternative in WinBoard itself. Perhaps an exclamation point would be a suitable alternative? Or I could of course mae it a named option, rather than just a prefix character. E.g.

winboard.exe /at=xxx.ini

or

winboard -at xxx

as equivalent for

winboard.exe @xxx.ini

[Tony Hecker]

Then I would first have to provide an alternative in WinBoard itself. Perhaps an exclamation point would be a suitable alternative? Or I could of course mae it a named option, rather than just a prefix character. E.g.

winboard.exe /at=xxx.ini

or

winboard -at xxx

as equivalent for

winboard.exe @xxx.ini

All of those ideas sound good to me.