Help on XBoard settings

[Christos Gitsis]

Hello,

I would like to know how XBoard users manage to save various settings using XBoard.

In other words, can I do something to avoid typing
$> xboard -fd /usr/local/games/bin -fcp yace -sd /usr/local/games/bin -scp baron
(as is possible in WinBoard, where I run winboard without arguments and a menu appears, where I can selected from installed engines), or can I configure the program's appearance?

I remember reading somewhere in the past that there is a file called Xdefaults (or something like that), which is the analogous of the winboard.ini file in WinBoard. But I haven't found this file on my system. What does this file look like? Is it only for XBoard, or for other programs as well? Perhaps somebody can post their file here.

Regards,
Christos

[Christos Gitsis]

It looks like not many people use XBoard.

Anyway, in case someone else has the same problem, I found a good solution to my problem in Scotty, a python script written by Alexander Wagner (http://theorie.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~arwagner/chess/).

Regards,
Christos

[indigirl]

well you typed more in your message than would be required to run xboard from the command line. kind of ironic ;). but it looks like scotty will work for you (thank you for posting the link). you can also run from a shell script. i won't go into that because there are tons of tutorials for bash shell and perl scripts to find through google search. i have tried the .Xdefaults file but it xboard has not detected the file -- but it should work because it is documented in the xboard man page. the idea is to simply create a .Xdefaults file in your home directory with a regular text editor. it tells you how to do it in the xboard man page. my non working .Xdefaults file is pasted below:

XBoard*firstChessProgram: ./crafty
XBoard*firstDirectory: /home/daniel/src/crafty
XBoard*internetChessServerMode: True
XBoard*colorizeMessages: True
XBoard*internetChessServerInputBox: True
XBoard*zippyPlay: True
XBoard*zippyAcceptOnly: 0
XBoard*zippyNoplayCrafty: True
XBoard*zippyAbort: True
XBoard*zippyMaxGames: 3