Suppress Popups

[Dan]

Is there an option to run xboard and suppress popups (illegal moves, false claims, and the like)?

I try to have engine matches for variants and due to differing variant rules, sometimes engines like to play without a king (Xboard of course adjudicates correctly)

[H.G.Muller]

Do you want to suppress popups, or do you want to suppress the events? I don't think 'false claims' do cause a popup in the first place, only illegal engine moves.

If you play variants with different rules as XBoard knows, you should switch legality testing off (in the Options -> General menu dialog). This will automatically disable mate detection and false-claim detection, even if they are still switched on. (You can switch those individually in the Optons -> Adudications dialog.) If the events do not occur, you won't have any popups either.

[Dan]

I think suppressing events might be it. I'd like no popup when a match ends, so my scripts can run without an 'OK'.

[H.G.Muller]

I don't think XBoard waits for you to OK popups before exiting, does it? Only Fatal Errors and the match-result popups do that. But not things like move errors, or notes to the user. The popup for move results and fatal errors can be suppressed with the option -popupExitMessage true|false (short forms -exit / -xexit).

Of course when an engine does an illegal move, and the other engine does not accept it, the game will still hang, and the match will hang in that case if you don't have -autoCallFlag on..

Do you still need scripts if you use the latest development release, btw?

[Dan]

Aha! -xexit does the trick!

I probably don't need scripts, but I usually wait for "official" releases.

[mocha1961]

I don't think XBoard waits for you to OK popups before exiting, does it? Only Fatal Errors and the match-result popups do that. But not things like move errors, or notes to the user. The popup for move results and fatal errors can be suppressed with the option -popupExitMessage true|false (short forms -exit / -xexit).

Of course when an engine does an illegal move, and the other engine does not accept it, the game will still hang, and the match will hang in that case if you don't have -autoCallFlag on..

Do you still need scripts if you use the latest development release, btw?

is this true with the winboard version 4.5.2 also? i've been getting those illegal moves also almost at the end of the game where i lose in time because the engine stops moving because of that popups

[H.G.Muller]

I don't get it. Why would you lose on time when the engine stops moving? I would expect the engine to lose on time in that case.

I think the engine stops moving not because of the popup, but because it made an illegal move. Because the engine obviously did think it was legal, and so it thinks it did already move. So why would it move again? In most variants you have to wait first for your opponent to move. But the opponent will of course not do that, because it is still waiting for the original move, which was stopped by WinBoard for being illegal. Not having a popup would not change any of this.