Winboard settings

[keyol]

Hopefully someone can help! I am having problems maintaining a setting option in winboard. Whenever I go into options, adjudication and engine #1 score is absolute, check off that option and save that setting it does not stay there if I close winboard and open it up again. Every time I close winboard and reopen it I always have to recheck that option. And by the way this happens in all the winboards I've tested. I am currently using winboard portable 4.6.2. Please help! Thanks in advance

[H.G.Muller]

Indeed, /first/secondScoreIsAbsolute, like any option that goes with a specific engine, (e.g. whether it has own book, is UCI etc.) are not persistent, (i.e. not saved in the settings file). Because the engine name itself is also not persistent, so that next time you might run with a different engine, that would not need the option.

The idea of such options is to use them on the 'engine line' in the engine list, from which engines are selected. You can use the Engine -> Edit Engine List option to add such options to the engines for which they are needed. Like

"Crafty" -fcp "crafty.exe" -fd "../Crafty" -firstScoreIsAbsolute true

The engine list is persistent, but the option will only be invoked when you select Crafty.

[keyol]

Thank you for the reply, I must have did it wrong because it did not work. What I did was try to write the command line at the end of the parameter line and also after where it reads exe fd. I thought maybe if I wrote down the parameter line exactly as it appears in my engine edit list that would help in advising me better. Here is what the line reads when you go into edit engine list, it reads as follows- "komodo-tcec-64bit.exe" -fd "C:\Users\Derrick\Desktop\engines\Komodo TCEC"-fUCI. It reads exactly as stated, I have tried putting the command line that you had suggested at the end of it and also after where it reads "komodo-tcec-64bit.exe" -fd where I inserted -firstScoreIsAbsolute true with no success. Hope this helps in helping me to resolve this and thank you again for your help.

[H.G.Muller]

Oh sorry, my mistake. The name of the option is not -firstScoreIsAbsolute, but -firstScoreAbs. (firstScoreIsAbsolute is the name of the corresponding variable in the source code.) So you would have to append " -firstScoreAbs true" to the engine line.

It is kind of unusual, though, that UCI engines would print scores with the wrong sign. I don't have Komodo, so I cannot be sure, but I would be surprised if it needed this option. (Crafty does, however. But it is not UCI.) Applying the option to an engine that does not need it will break correct operation of several WinBoard features (such as adjudication).

[keyol]

Thank you, the last suggestion works. By the way the none of the uci engines that I have installed in winboard print the wrong output lines, I wanted to do make some uci engines score absolute without always having to redo it when I open up winboard, it was starting to annoy me. Thank you again for your help!

[H.G.Muller]

Well, be aware that this would cause failure of any score-based adjudication you might specify, and causes wrong display of the black scores in th eveal graph.