Save settings

[Dave Neve]

Hello

I'm new to Winboard and I can't seem to save any settings, either with the save settings now or save settings on exit button.

The last used Engine is not saved, (have to choose an engine every time), time savings go back to 40 minutes incremental (I want to use 30 secs per move), and the variant is not saved either.

Any ideas please?

Thanks in advance

[H.G.Muller]

Which version of WinBoard are you using, and how did you launch it? Some shortcuts for launching it have predefined settings that would overrule the saved settings. Although that should never apply to the 'recent engines' in the Engine menu.

That you always have to choose an engine from the same combobox list in the Startup Dialog is normal; if yoiu are not happy with the engine it offers as first choice you can re-order the lines in the engine list through the Engine->Edit Engine List menu. The variant is indeed not saved; most users only play normal Chess, and even those that do variants usually do normal Chess most, in addition to many different variants, so that they prefer to start in normal Chess rather than in the variant previously used. You can change the default variant by adding a line

/variant=...

at the bottom of the winboard.ini file in the WinBoard folder.

There could be a problem with the accessibility of the folder where WinBoard tries to create the settings file. In the standard install of WinBoard 4.8.0 this would normally be created in the user's AppData folder. (Something like C:\Users\<username>\AppData, but it could depend on your Windows version.)

[Dave Neve]

Hello H.G. Muller

I have version 4.8.0b and I launch it with a shortcut that goes to C:\WinBoard-4.8.0\WinBoard\winboard.exe

I have now edited the menu you told me too. Not the sort of menu that you would imagine you could edit as there is no move up/down buttons for the engines and right click copy and paste does not work either (shortcuts do though).

Finally, what I did notice tonight is that settings are saved once Winboard is opened for a session of 2+ games

Each new game keeps the settings including the variant but all this is lost once you close the program

So thanks for your help

Dave Neve

[H.G.Muller]

I have never seen a text editor with up/down buttons (NotePad, WordPad, MS Word, gedit on Linux...).

The editing works as is standard in Windows text widgets; we did not do anything special there. Drag & drop editing works by selecting the text you want to move, and then dragging it to the place where you want it with the left button. I usually use the Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V accelerator keystrokes for copy/paste; these work too.

'Saving Settings' is what happens when you close WinBoard. That it sticks to its settings as long as it is open is not a matter of saving anything. By their very nature settings must be remembered to make it possible to apply them. 'New Game' just does not actively reset them, it just applies them. Only when a program is closed it would forget everything, and only information committed to file can be used next time you start it. That this doesn't happen in your case remains a bit of a mistery.

But, like I said, some of the settings, such as the variant, were intentionally designed to be 'volatile', and are never saved. So that they always revert to the default value when WinBoard is started.