Save settings on exit bug

[lantonov]

I uncheck the boxes:
-Options / Common engine / First has own book
-Options / Common engine / Second has own book
then press the button OK.

I want these boxes to be unchecked the next time I start Winboard, so I select
- Options / Save settings now, or
- Options / Save settings on exit.

However, the next time I start Winboard, the "own book" boxes stay checked.

Other settings I have tried do not have this bug.

[H.G.Muller]

That is not a bug, but a feature. The 'Own Book' options are not persistent, like any option that belongs to an engine (i.e. comes in a 'first' and 'second' variety). Because the next time you might run with other engines, and whether the current engine has an own book or not doesn't mean that the engine you will be using next time has a book.

Such options are intended for installing with the engine: in the Load Engine dialog you can tick whether the engine should use GUI book (and if it does, this will untick the 'Own Book' option for that engine every time you load it). In this case there is also a global option effective during tourneys, which you can set in the Tournament Dialog: "discourage own books". This unticks the 'Own Book' options when the engine is loaded for the tourney by default, so that engines will be using GUI book, unless they are explicitly installed to NOT use GUI book. (Which usually isn't the case, as not using the GUI book is the default setting, so engines that don't want to use it typically don't specify anything about book at all, but just use the default.)

[lantonov]

HGM, thanks for the clarification!

[lantonov]

I have the following problem with the newest Xboard / Winboard (xboard-1000f13): when I set the engine (Stockfish) to use own book, and the result is a draw, Winboard crashes at the very end of the game. This happens when the second engine also uses own book (same or different as the first) and the GUI also uses book (same or different than the engines' books). This problem appeared after playing about 10 games with the same books. Before this, Winboard made records in the first-engine book like this:
55% 350 e2e4 {5/4}
45% 300 d2d4 {4/4} <== the last item (in braces) added by Winboard.

When Winboard started to crash, it did not add any records in the book.

[H.G.Muller]

The stuff between the braces is the learn info. WinBoard would never add that; it must be Polyglot that has been adding it with book-learning on. I am not sure what settings you are using exactly. Are both 'engine has own book' checkboxes ticked in WinBoard? That would mean WinBoard won't use the GUI book for either engine, so it would not use it at all. That seems to rule out that WinBoard can even notice this, let alone crash on it.

What do you actually mean by 'WinBoard crashes'? Can it be that it does not crash at all, but just exits because one of the engines (or in this case Polyglots) died? What message does it give, as a popup or printed in the terminal?

[lantonov]

I confirm that BookLearn=true in polyglot.ini. "Engine has own book" checkboxes are checked for both engines. By "crash" I mean that the program automatically exits and the winboard process disappears from the Task Manager.

I meant to say that this is probably Polyglot problem. Sorry for confusing Polyglot with Winboard.

[H.G.Muller]

Does this happen if the two Polyglots have different books? I can imagine that when they both try to update the same book with learn info at the same time, something goes wrong.

[lantonov]

I use the same polyglot for both engines. So probably this causes the crash. I'll test it with 2 separate polyglots.
Also, I have a confusing array of ini files: polyglot.ini, stockfish5.ini (for the first engine), stockfish5s.ini (for the second engine, SF+syzygy). I don't know how this settings interact with each other.

Started to play with different combinations of settings. I'll post the results here.