feature requests

[jdart]

A couple of features that are missing from Winboard/xboard (as far as I know):

1. Ability to set sub-second time/increment. Internally the clock is maintained at sub-second precision but the command line options and menu only allow setting time to 1 second precision.

2. Ability to use in sequential order positions from a game or position file during a match. I can do this with a script that restarts xboard each time with a different N value for for -lgf N but that is awkward and not as easy to do in Windows. It can also cause problems if for any reason one of the engines does not shut down cleanly during a long match. (I think you will need this feature as part of the new tournament manager, since many testers run with this kind of setup).

[H.G.Muller]

Both already work for quite some time. The value argument to -inc can be a float. (Not sure about the menu dialog.) Auto-increment of the loadGameIndex (-lgi) can be achieved by setting it to -1 (increment every game) or -2 (increment every 2 games, so they are played with both colors). There even is an option -rewindIndex, that allows you to restart in case you play more games than there were opening lines in the file.

In the tourney manager dialog of WinBoard there are checkboxes in the lower left to step through the games/positions, and select 1 or 2 games/position, as the numeric input fields for the loadGameIndex and loadPositionIndex did not accept negative numbers.

[jdart]

Thanks for the info. The negative argument for -lgi does not seem to be documented in the help section for command-line options.

--Jon

[H.G.Muller]

Well, it is in the html help for WinBoard, and the man file for XBoard:

/lgf or /loadGameFile filename
/lgi or /loadGameIndex N

If loadGameFile is set, WinBoard reads the specified game file at startup. You can leave out the name of this option and give just the file name, which is handy if you want to configure WinBoard as a game viewer with a browser such as the Windows Explorer or Netscape. The filename is interpreted relative to WinBoard's initial working directory. The filename "-" specifies the standard input. If there is more than one game in the file, WinBoard pops up a menu of the available games, with entries based on their PGN tags. If loadGameIndex is set to N, the menu is suppressed and the Nth game found in the file is loaded immediately. A game index of –1 will load the first game, but step to the next game on each new game in Match Mode. Similarly, an index of –2 will step to the next game every two games, so that all games are played by each player with both colors.

If the loadGameIndex specifies an index -1, this triggers auto-increment
of the index in @code{matchMode}, which means that after every game the
index is incremented by one, causing each game of the match to be played
from the next game in the file. Similarly, specifying an index value of -2
causes the index to be incremented every two games, so that each game
in the file is used twice (with reversed colors).
The @code{rewindIndex} option causes the index to be reset to the
first game of the file when it has reached a specified value.

It is true that it is not mentioned in the WinBoard old WinHelp file, but we really should deprecate that, because almost no one can read that format anymore.

[jdart]

I am looking at the online help (accessed from the Help Contents menu item) for 4.5.2a and it says:

/lgf or /loadGameFile filename
/lgi or /loadGameIndex N

If loadGameFile is set, WinBoard reads the specified game file at startup. You can leave out the name of this option and give just the file name, which is handy if you want to configure WinBoard as a game viewer with a browser such as the Windows Explorer or Netscape. The filename is interpreted relative to WinBoard's initial working directory. The filename "-" specifies the standard input. If there is more than one game in the file, WinBoard pops up a menu of the available games, with entries based on their PGN tags. If loadGameIndex is set to N, the menu is suppressed and the Nth game found in the file is loaded immediately.