2 XBoard and WinBoard: Frequently Asked Questions</TITLE></HEAD>
4 <H1>XBoard and WinBoard: Frequently Asked Questions</H1>
6 This document answers some frequently asked questions about the
7 graphical chess interfaces XBoard and WinBoard.
8 A hyperlinked version of this FAQ is available on
9 the Web through the page
11 "http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html"
12 >http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html</A>.
14 <i>This FAQ is in need of revision. Please contact us if you'd like
15 to help update it.</i>
21 <LI><A HREF="#[A0]">[A] Introduction and hot topics</A></LI>
22 <LI><A HREF="#[B0]">[B] XBoard and WinBoard</A></LI>
23 <LI><A HREF="#[C0]">[C] XBoard and WinBoard, bugs and problems</A></LI>
24 <LI><A HREF="#[D0]">[D] Crafty and other topics</A></LI>
28 <H2>Detailed contents</H2>
31 <LI><A NAME="[A0]" HREF="#[A]">[A] Introduction and hot topics</A></LI>
33 <LI><a href="#[A.1]">[A.1] What are XBoard and WinBoard?</a></li>
34 <LI><A HREF="#[A.2]">[A.2] Where can I get chess information and chess
36 <LI><A HREF="#[A.3]">[A.3] What are the current version numbers for
37 XBoard and WinBoard?</A></LI>
38 <LI><A HREF="#[A.4]">[A.4] Who is working on this project?</A></LI>
39 <LI><A HREF="#[A.5]">[A.5] How do I report bugs, offer help, etc.?</A></LI>
40 <LI><a href="#[A.6]">[A.6] What are the future plans for XBoard and
44 <LI><A NAME="[B0]" HREF="#[B]">[B] XBoard and WinBoard</A></LI>
46 <LI><A HREF="#[B.1]">[B.1] What is XBoard?</A></LI>
47 <LI><A HREF="#[B.2]">[B.2] Is there an XBoard for Microsoft Windows? What is
48 WinBoard? How do I install WinBoard?</A></LI>
49 <LI><A HREF="#[B.3]">[B.3] Is there an XBoard for the Amiga? What is
51 <LI><A HREF="#[B.4]">[B.4] Is there an XBoard for the Macintosh?</A></LI>
52 <LI><A HREF="#[B.5]">[B.5] Does XBoard run on VMS?</A></LI>
53 <LI><A HREF="#[B.6]">[B.6] What is cmail?</A></LI>
54 <LI><A HREF="#[B.7]">[B.7] How do I build XBoard? Do I have to have
56 <LI><A HREF="#[B.8]">[B.8] Can I use XBoard or WinBoard to play a game
57 of chess with another human?</A></LI>
58 <LI><A HREF="#[B.9]">[B.9] Will WinBoard run on Windows 3.1?
59 How about Windows CE (also known as Pocket PC)?</A></LI>
60 <LI><A HREF="#[B.10]">[B.10] How do I use XBoard or WinBoard as an external
61 viewer for PGN files with my Web browser?</A></LI>
62 <LI><A HREF="#[B.11]">[B.11] How do I use WinBoard as an external viewer for
63 PGN files with the MS Windows File Manager or Explorer?</A></LI>
64 <LI><A HREF="#[B.12]">[B.12] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal
66 <LI><A HREF="#[B.13]">[B.13] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal
67 with WinBoard?</A></LI>
68 <LI><A HREF="#[B.14]">[B.14] How do I play bughouse with XBoard or WinBoard?
70 <li><a href="#[B.16]">[B.16]
71 What is Zippy? How can I interface a chess program to the Internet
72 Chess Servers?</a></li>
73 <li><a href="#[B.17]">[B.17]
74 How can I interface my own chess program to XBoard or WinBoard?</a></li>
75 <li><a href="#[B.18]">[B.18]
76 How can I recompile WinBoard from source?</a></li>
77 <li><a href="#[B.19]">[B.19]
78 How can I use XBoard or WinBoard to talk
79 to an Internet Chess Server through a firewall or proxy?</a></li>
80 <li><a href="#[B.20]">[B.20]
81 How can I use XBoard or WinBoard on chess.net with accuclock?</a></li>
82 <li><a href="#[B.21]">[B.21]
83 Can I get Zippy to do one or more ICS commands automatically at the
84 start or end of each game?</a></li>
85 <li><a href="#[B.22]">[B.22]
86 How do I print from WinBoard?</a></li>
87 <li><a href="#[B.23]">[B.23]
88 Can I get Zippy to automatically reconnect to ICS when its connection
90 <li><a href="#[B.24]">[B.24]
91 The chess engines are too strong and always beat me. How can I adjust
92 the difficulty level to make them weaker?</a></li>
93 <li><a href="#[B.25]">[B.25]
94 May I use the piece bitmaps from XBoard/WinBoard in my own program?</a></li>
98 <LI><A NAME="[C0]" HREF="#[C]">[C] XBoard and WinBoard, bugs and
101 <LI><A HREF="#[C.1]">[C.1] I can't build XBoard because the
102 X11/Xaw/... include files are not found.</A></LI>
103 <LI><A HREF="#[C.2]">[C.2] Configuring or building XBoard fails due to
104 missing header files, missing libraries, or undefined symbols.</a></li>
105 <LI><A HREF="#[C.3]">[C.3] I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with a modem.
106 I'm not running SLIP or PPP, but just dialing in to an ordinary login account
107 ("shell account").</A></LI>
108 <LI><A HREF="#[C.4]">[C.4]
109 I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with Windows 95 and SLIP
110 or PPP. When trying to start up, it gets the error "Address family
111 not supported by protocol family" (or some equally strange message).
113 <LI><A HREF="#[C.5]">[C.5] When I try to run WinBoard, I get the message
114 "Failed to start chess program gnuchess on localhost: NO LANGFILE (file
115 gnuchess.lan not found)".</A></LI>
116 <LI><A HREF="#[C.6]">[C.6] I want to use XBoard or WinBoard as an Internet
117 Chess Server interface, but the ICS Client option is grayed out on the
119 <LI><A HREF="#[C.7]">[C.7] How do I give command-line options to
120 a Windows program like WinBoard?</A></LI>
121 <LI><A HREF="#[C.9]">[C.9]
122 When I exit from WinBoard after using it to play against a chess
123 program on my machine, the chess program keeps running in the background.
125 <li><a href="#[C.12]">[C.12]
127 opponents often get extra time after they make their moves?
128 Why do I sometimes lose time off my clock after I make my move?
130 <li><a href="#[C.13]">[C.13]
131 I can't run WinBoard unless I delete the WinBoard.ini file each time!
133 <li><a href="#[C.15]">[C.15]
134 I get errors compiling XBoard's parser.c.
136 <li><a href="#[C.16]">[C.16]
137 I get an error building WinBoard from source because "flex" is not found.
139 <li><a href="#[C.17]">[C.17]
140 XBoard hangs shortly after connecting to an ICS when used with dxterm,
141 cmdtool, dtterm, kterm, konsole, or other substitutes for xterm.
143 <li><a href="#[C.18]">[C.18]
144 The WinBoard pieces show up in the wrong colors, appear distorted,
145 or are not visible at all.
147 <LI><A HREF="#[C.19]">[C.19] XBoard or WinBoard tells me
148 "Error: first chess program (...) exited unexpectedly".</A></LI>
149 <li><a href="#[C.20]">[C.20]
150 XBoard tells me "Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry", or
151 "too few colors available; trying monochrome mode", or
152 "XPM pieces cannot be used in monochrome mode".
154 <li><a href="#[C.21]">[C.21]
155 When I log in to freechess.org, the Enter key doesn't work, and I
156 have to use Ctrl+J instead. But when I use WinBoard, Ctrl+J doesn't
157 work either, so I'm stuck.
159 <li><a href="#[C.22]">[C.22]
160 XBoard says, "Failed to start first chess program gnuchessx
161 on localhost: gnuchessx: No such file or directory."
165 <LI><A NAME="[D0]" HREF="#[D]">[D] Crafty and other topics</A></LI>
167 <LI><A HREF="#[D.1]">[D.1] What is XChess?</A></LI>
168 <LI><A HREF="#[D.2]">[D.2] What is Winsock Chess?</A></LI>
169 <LI><A HREF="#[D.3]">[D.3] What is Crafty?</A></LI>
170 <LI><A HREF="#[D.4]">[D.4] How do I use Crafty with XBoard?</A></LI>
171 <LI><A HREF="#[D.5]">[D.5] How do I use Crafty with WinBoard?</A></LI>
172 <LI><A HREF="#[D.6]">[D.6] How do I use GNU Chess 5 with XBoard?</A></LI>
177 <H2><A NAME="[A]">[A] Introduction and hot topics</A></H2>
179 <H3><A NAME="[A.1]">[A.1] What are XBoard and WinBoard?</A></H3>
181 XBoard and WinBoard are graphical user interfaces for chess.
182 XBoard runs with the X Window System on Unix systems (including
183 GNU/Linux); see topic
184 <A HREF="#[B.1]">[B.1]</A>.
185 WinBoard runs on true 32-bit Microsoft Windows operating
186 systems, such as Windows 95, 98, NT,
187 2000, ME, XP, and should continue to work
188 on future 32-bit Windows systems. It does
189 not work on Windows CE (also known as Pocket PC), nor does it work on
190 16-bit Windows systems such as Windows 3.1. See topic
191 <A HREF="#[B.2]">[B.2]</A>.
194 <H3><A NAME="[A.2]">[A.2] Where can I get chess information and chess
197 As a shortcut to most things mentioned in this FAQ, try Tim Mann's
198 Chess Web page, <A HREF= "http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html"
199 >http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html</A>. This page page is a good
200 place to get the latest released versions of XBoard and WinBoard and
201 the most up-to-date version of this FAQ. Also see our Savannah
202 project pages at <a href="https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/"
203 >https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/</a>.
205 <p>If you have other questions about XBoard/WinBoard that aren't answered
206 in this FAQ, you can try Aaron Tay's WinBoard and Chess Engines FAQ, at
207 <a href="http://www.aarontay.per.sg/Winboard/"
208 >http://www.aarontay.per.sg/Winboard/</a>.
210 <P>For general news and information about chess, try the newsgroup hierarchy
211 rec.games.chess.*, especially the groups rec.games.chess.misc and
212 rec.games.chess.computer. Both of the latter groups have very informative
213 FAQs maintained by Steve Pribut; look for them on the newsgroups or at
215 "http://www.clark.net/pub/pribut/chess.html"
216 >http://www.clark.net/pub/pribut/chess.html</A>.
218 <P>Like other GNU software, you can get XBoard, and
219 WinBoard by anonymous FTP from
221 "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/"
222 >ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/</A>
223 and its many mirror sites. Look in the subdirectories xboard, and winboard.
224 The .tar.gz suffix on the files there indicates they were packed with tar
225 and compressed with gzip. The .exe or .zip suffixes indicate files that
226 were packed and compressed with zip.
228 <P>For other chess software, try the Internet Chess Library. Use anonymous FTP
229 to connect to ftp.freechess.org, or go to the Web page
231 "http://www.freechess.org/"
232 >http://www.freechess.org/</A>.
233 You can get chess software, game
234 collections, the FAQ file for rec.games.chess, and other chess-related
235 material there, in the directory pub/chess. The FTP server can
236 automatically decompress files for you as you download them, useful if you
239 <P>Here is a sample anonymous ftp session. Some of the ftp server's responses
240 are abbreviated, but all the commands you must type are included.
244 Connected to ftp.gnu.org
246 Password: your-email-address@your-site
249 ftp> cd /pub/gnu/xboard
251 -rw-r--r-- 1 14910 wheel 1057625 May 20 00:25 xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz
252 ftp> get xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz
253 150 BINARY connection for xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz (1057625 bytes).
254 226 Transfer complete.
259 <H3><A NAME="[A.3]">[A.3] What are the current version numbers for
260 XBoard and WinBoard?</A></H3>
262 At this writing, the current version numbers are:
265 <LI>XBoard 4.2.7</LI>
266 <LI>WinBoard 4.2.7</LI>
270 <H3><A NAME="[A.4]">[A.4] Who is working on this project?</A></H3>
272 Please see our Savannah project pages at <a
273 href="https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/"
274 >https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/</a> for a list of active
275 developers. Many others occasionally contribute suggestions and
276 snippets of code, for which we are grateful.
279 <H3><A NAME="[A.5]">[A.5] How do I report bugs, offer help, etc.?</A></H3>
281 <P>Bug reports, suggestions, and offers to help on XBoard
282 or WinBoard should be sent to
283 bug-xboard<a name="nospam">@</a>gnu.org. <i>(Note: as of 4 Nov 2003,
284 this mailing list is temporarily broken. You can send mail to
285 bug-xboard<a name="nospam">@</a>tim-mann.org instead until it is fixed.)</i>
287 <p>Beginner questions and discussion about the program may get faster
288 answers on the WinBoard Forum at <a
289 href="http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/"
290 >http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/</a>.
292 <p>If you are developing a
293 chess engine that works with XBoard or WinBoard (or an alternative
294 GUI that works with such engines), see the Chess Engines mailing
296 <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chess-engines"
297 >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chess-engines</a>.
299 <P>Any time you want to report a possible bug in XBoard or WinBoard,
300 we need to know exactly what you did, and exactly what error (or
301 other) messages you got.
303 <P>If you are using Unix, run the "script" program, run XBoard with
304 the -debug flag (if you get as far as running it), do whatever is
305 necessary to reproduce the problem, type "exit" to the shell, and mail
306 us the resulting typescript file. We also need to know what
307 hardware/operating system combination you are using. The command
308 "uname -a" will usually tell you this; include its output in your
311 <P>If you are using MS Windows, run WinBoard with the -debug flag, and
312 send us a copy of the WinBoard.debug file. If you aren't sure how to
313 add command-line flags to WinBoard, you can hit Ctrl+Alt+F12 to create
314 a WinBoard.debug file after WinBoard starts, but that is not as good,
315 because a few messages that would have been printed at the start are
318 <p>Either way, please send us the exact text of the commands you typed
319 and the output you got, not just your recollection of approximately
320 what they were. The messages may seem meaningless to you, but they
321 are very meaningful to us and essential for diagnosing problems.
324 <h3><a name="[A.6]">[A.6] What are the future plans for XBoard and
327 <p>Our plans are always in flux. As with most free software projects,
328 the next release will happen when it happens -- or it may never
329 happen. This has always been the policy for XBoard/WinBoard.
330 Releases have never been promised in specific time frames.
332 <p>Starting in November 2003, several new developers have joined the
333 project, and work is now hosted at <a
334 href="https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/"
335 >https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/</a>. Lots of work is just
336 getting underway, but nothing is far along yet.
338 <p>Here is a partial list of items that have a nonzero probability of
339 happening in finite time.
342 <li>Small bug fixes. Occasionally someone sends us a fix, or reports
343 a small bug very clearly so that we're able to fix it in a few minutes
346 <li>Protocol version 3. The members of the chess engine authors'
347 mailing list discussed a set of proposed features for the next version
348 of the XBoard/WinBoard chess engine communication protocol.
349 Unfortunately, this project has gotten only as far as that discussion
350 took it; no revisions of the protocol spec or coding have been done
351 yet. A few simple features are very clearly needed, though, and will
352 probably appear in time.<p>
354 <li>Contributed features. Several people have mailed me code to add
355 various features. Most of this code is available on the
356 XBoard/WinBoard extensions page at <a
357 href="http://www.tim-mann.org/extensions.html"
358 >http://www.tim-mann.org/extensions.html</a>, but it is not in any
359 official releases yet. We are in the process of getting folks to
360 formally assign the copyrights on their contributions to the Free
361 Software Foundation so that we can include it in official releases in
364 <li>Internationalization. Several people have expressed interest in
365 internationalizing XBoard/WinBoard, and so hopefully this project will
366 go forward. Once the internationalization support is in, we will need
367 more translators. Watch for news on the xboard-devel mailing list on
373 <H2><A NAME="[B]">[B] XBoard and WinBoard</A></H2>
375 <H3><A NAME="[B.1]">[B.1] What is XBoard?</A></H3>
377 XBoard is a graphical user interface for chess. It displays a
378 chessboard on the screen, accepts moves made with the mouse, and loads
379 and saves games in Portable Game Notation (PGN). XBoard is free software.
380 It serves as a front-end for many different chess services, including:
382 <p><strong>Chess engines</strong> that will run on your machine and
383 play a game against you or help you analyze, such as GNU Chess and
384 Crafty (topic <A HREF="#[D.3]">[D.3]</A> below).
386 <p><strong>Chess servers</strong> on the Internet, where you can
387 connect to play chess with people from all over the world, watch other
388 users play, or just hang out and chat.
390 <p><strong>Correspondence chess</strong> played by electronic
391 mail. The cmail program (topic <A HREF="#[B.6]">[B.6]</A> below)
392 automates the tasks of parsing email from your opponent, playing his
393 moves out on your board, and mailing your reply move after you've
396 <p><strong>The Web</strong> and your own saved games. You can use
397 XBoard as a helper application to view PGN games in your
398 Web browser, or to load and save your own PGN files.
400 <P>XBoard runs under Unix or Unix-compatible systems. It requires the
401 X Window System, version X11R4 or later. There are also ports of
402 XBoard to 32-bit Microsoft Windows and to
403 the Amiga. See topics <A HREF="#[B.2]">[B.2]</A> and <A
404 HREF="#[B.3]">[B.3]</A> respectively.
407 <H3><A NAME="[B.2]">[B.2] Is there an XBoard for Microsoft Windows? What is WinBoard? How do I install WinBoard?</A></H3>
409 WinBoard is a port of XBoard to 32-bit Microsoft Windows systems, such
410 as Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, and XP. It uses the same back end
411 chess code as XBoard, but the front end graphics code is a complete
412 rewrite. WinBoard is free software.
414 <P>The WinBoard distribution includes a port of GNU Chess to Win32.
415 The GNU Chess port is distributed in executable form, with instructions for
416 rebuilding it from the standard GNU Chess sources (available separately). You
417 should have at least 16 to 24 MB of memory to run GNU Chess with WinBoard.
419 <P>The WinBoard distribution also includes the ICC timestamp and FICS
420 timeseal programs (topic <A HREF="#[B.12]">[B.12]</A>).
422 <P>cmail (topic <A HREF="#[B.6]">[B.6]</A>) has not been ported to
423 Windows. All the other XBoard functions are included in WinBoard.
424 The International Email Chess Group web site at <a
425 href="http://www.iecg.org/" >http://www.iecg.org/</a> recommends
426 ECTool (<a href="http://www.ectool.nu/" >http://www.ectool.nu/</a>)
427 for playing correspondence chess under Windows.
429 <p>You install WinBoard as follows. Download the WinBoard package to
430 your PC (see topic <A HREF="#[A.2]">[A.2]</A>). It will be a file
431 with a name like winboard-4_0_0.exe. Double-click on this file
432 in the Explorer or File Manager to run it. Follow the on-screen
436 <H3><A NAME="[B.3]">[B.3] Is there an XBoard for the Amiga? What is AmyBoard?</A></H3>
438 AmyBoard is a port of XBoard to the Amiga, by Jochen Wiedmann.
439 The distribution includes a port of GNU Chess.
440 AmyBoard is free software.
442 <p>The current version of AmyBoard is 330.5 (based on XBoard 3.3.0).
443 No one is currently maintaining it.
445 <P>System requirements:
448 <LI>An Amiga (obviously :-), running OS 2.04 or later, 2Mb RAM or more.</LI>
449 <LI>MUI 2.0 or later.</LI>
450 <LI>Workbench or another screen with no less than 640x400 pixels (adjustable
451 with the MUI-Prefs); this restriction is just because we don't have
452 bitmaps with less than 40x40 pixels per square. If someone contributes
453 bitmaps with 20x20 or 20x25, they will work with any Hires mode.</LI>
456 If you would like to use an ICS, you need an Internet connection via either
459 <LI>a telnet-like program, or</LI>
460 <LI>a terminal program reading from stdin and writing to stdout.</LI>
463 AmyBoard is available in the Internet Chess Library (topic <A HREF="#[A.2]">[A.2]</A>).
466 <H3><A NAME="[B.4]">[B.4] Is there an XBoard for the Macintosh?</A></H3>
468 Because MacOS X has a Unix base, XBoard will compile and run on it.
469 You do need an X11 (X Window System) server and client libraries.
470 These do not come with Mac OS, but both free and commercial versions
471 are available. Once you install the X11 package, XBoard is reported
472 to compile and run without changes. I am not a Mac user and have not
473 tried this myself, so I cannot answer questions about it.
475 Version 4.2.6 and earlier of XBoard come with an old copy of the
476 config.sub utility that does not recognize Mac OS X, so to build
477 XBoard, you'll have to tell the configure program what OS you are
478 running. Follow the instructions in topic <A HREF="#[B.7]">[B.7]</A>
479 of this FAQ, but add the argument <tt>--host=powerpc-apple-bsd</tt> to
480 the end of the "configure" command line.
482 There is no version of XBoard or WinBoard that runs with the native
483 (non-X11) Mac graphical interface, and none that runs on MacOS 9 or
488 <H3><A NAME="[B.5]">[B.5] Does XBoard run on VMS?</A></H3>
490 No. This port would probably be a lot easier than the Win32 and Amiga
491 ports were, because VMS has the X Window system (under the name
492 DECwindows) and is now POSIX compliant. However, I don't know enough
493 about VMS to do the port myself, and I don't have time. If you do,
494 give it a try! Send mail to me,
495 tim<a name="nospam2">@</a>tim-mann.org (Tim Mann), if you're
499 <H3><A NAME="[B.6]">[B.6] What is cmail?</A></H3>
501 cmail is a program that helps you play and keep track of electronic mail
502 correspondence chess games using XBoard. It is distributed with XBoard and
503 has its own manual page. cmail is free software. It was written by
504 Even Welsh. cmail has not been ported to Windows; sorry.
507 <H3><A NAME="[B.7]">[B.7] How do I build XBoard? Do I need gcc?</A></H3>
509 The first step to building XBoard is to get the distribution file. See topic
510 <A HREF="#[A.2]">[A.2]</A> for places you can ftp the software from.
512 <P>Next, decide what directory tree you are going to install XBoard
513 in. The default is /usr/local, but you probably don't have write
514 access to that directory unless you are a system administrator. If
515 you do, type the following to install it there:
518 gzip -cd xboard-*.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
526 If you want to install xboard in your personal home directory ($HOME/bin),
530 gzip -cd xboard-*.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
532 ./configure --prefix=$HOME
537 <P>If the first step above fails because you don't have gzip, see
538 topic <A HREF="#[A.2]">[A.2]</A>, and ask a local Unix expert if you
539 need more help. If you have any problems with the last two steps,
540 read the READ_ME and INSTALL files in the xboard-*/ directory. You
541 will also find this FAQ there.
543 <P>You don't need to have gcc to build XBoard. Almost any Unix C
547 <H3><A NAME="[B.8]">[B.8] Can I use XBoard or WinBoard to play a game
548 of chess with another human?</A></H3>
550 The only way for two humans on different machines to play chess in
551 real time using XBoard/WinBoard is to use an Internet Chess Server
552 as an intermediary. That is, each player runs his own copy of XBoard
553 or WinBoard, both of them log into an ICS, and they play a game there.
554 Two copies of XBoard/WinBoard cannot communicate with each other
557 <P>Instructions on how to get started with Internet chess are included
558 with the XBoard and WinBoard distributions. The network addresses
559 included in the distribution may not always be current. The oldest
560 and largest ICS is the Internet Chess Club at chessclub.com, which now
561 has a fee for registered use, but still allows free unregistered use.
562 There are also many newer sites with no fees, using the Free Internet
563 Chess Server implementation (FICS). The most active FICS site is
564 freechess.org. On these and most other chess servers,
565 the port number to use is 5000.
567 <P>If you don't have network connectivity to any ICS site, you
568 can run your own server using a version of the FICS code, but this
569 is not easy. See <a href="http://www.tim-mann.org/ics.html#ownics"
570 >http://www.tim-mann.org/ics.html#ownics</a> for advice and pointers.
572 <P>The cmail program included with XBoard lets you play email postal games with
573 another human; see topic <A HREF="#[B.6]">[B.6]</A>.
575 <P>Two humans can play chess on the same machine using one copy of
577 Edit Game mode, but the clocks don't run in this mode, so it's of limited
580 <P>See also topic <A HREF="#[D.2]">[D.2]</A>, Winsock Chess.
583 <H3><A NAME="[B.9]">[B.9] Will WinBoard run on Windows 3.1?
584 How about Windows CE (also known as Pocket PC)?
587 WinBoard does not run on Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, etc.,
588 not even with the Win32s compatibility package. The main problem is
589 that Win32s does not have threads or real concurrent processes. A
590 port of WinBoard to Windows 3.1 is possible in theory, but it would be
591 difficult and messy, and no one is going to do it.
593 <p>WinBoard does not run on Windows CE (also
594 known as Pocket PC). I don't know what would be required to port it.
596 <P>WinBoard does run well on full 32-bit versions of Windows, such as
597 Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, and XP, and should continue to work
598 on future 32-bit Windows systems.
601 <H3><A NAME="[B.10]">[B.10] How do I use XBoard or WinBoard as an external viewer for PGN files
602 with my Web browser?</A></H3>
606 - Add the following line to the file .mime.types in your home directory.
607 (Create the file if it doesn't exist already.)
609 application/x-chess-pgn pgn
612 - Add the following line to the file .mailcap in your home directory.
613 (Create the file if it doesn't exist already.)
615 application/x-chess-pgn; xboard -ncp -lgf %s
618 - Exit from your Web browser and restart it.
620 <P>2) On MS Windows systems:
622 <P>The exact procedure depends on which Web browser you are using.
623 The current version of WinBoard automatically configures itself as
624 your PGN viewer for local files, Netscape 4.x and later, and Internet
625 Explorer. This automatic setup probably works for all other current Web
629 <H3><A NAME="[B.11]">[B.11] How do I use WinBoard as an external viewer
630 for PGN files with the MS Windows File Manager or Explorer?</A></H3>
632 WinBoard sets this up automatically when you install it, except on old
633 versions of Windows NT (prior to 4.0). On Windows NT 3.51 or earlier,
634 go to the File Manager, click on the File menu, select Associate,
635 enter "pgn" as the extension, and use the Browse button to find your
636 copy of WinBoard and set up the association.
639 <H3><A NAME="[B.12]">[B.12] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal
640 with XBoard?</A></H3>
642 First, get the appropriate version of timestamp or timeseal for your
643 machine from ftp.chessclub.com or ftp.freechess.org.
644 Second, be sure that you can connect using XBoard <I>without</I>
645 timestamp/timeseal. Third, be sure that you can connect using
646 timestamp/timeseal without XBoard. See the help files on ICC and FICS
647 or ask people online if you have problems.
649 <P>If you are in a completely ordinary situation, where your machine
650 is directly on the Internet and you can connect to ICC or FICS
651 without timestamp/timeseal using
652 just the command "xboard -ics" or "xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org",
653 change that command to one of the following:
656 xboard -ics -icshost 204.178.125.65 -icshelper timestamp
658 xboard -ics -icshost 164.58.253.13 -icshelper timeseal
661 <p>If you have a firewall between your machine and the ICS, see topic
662 <A HREF="#[B.19]">[B.19]</A>.
664 <P>If you normally have to use the "/icscomm" command line option on
665 xboard to log into a second machine, and then telnet to ICC or FICS
666 from there, you are going to have to run the Unix version of timestamp
667 or timeseal on the second machine. (If the second machine is not
668 running Unix, you are out of luck.) Get the appropriate version of
669 timestamp or timeseal onto the shell machine via FTP; see the help
670 files on ICC and FICS for instructions. Then simply run it when you
671 would normally run telnet. In this configuration you are not
672 protected against lag between your PC and the shell machine, or for
673 lag caused by heavy load on the shell machine itself from other users.
675 <P>For further information on timestamp and timeseal, see the help
676 files on ICC and FICS.
679 <H3><A NAME="[B.13]">[B.13] How do I use ICC timestamp or FICS timeseal
680 with WinBoard?</A></H3>
682 <P>If you select an ICS from either the WinBoard Startup dialog or the
683 Windows Start submenu that WinBoard installs, WinBoard automatically
684 runs timestamp or timeseal if the ICS you chose is known to support it.
686 <P>If you are constructing a WinBoard command line by hand, add the
687 option "/icshelper timestamp" or "/icshelper timeseal" to the WinBoard
688 command line to use timestamp or timeseal. Both timestamp.exe and
689 timeseal.exe are included in the WinBoard distribution. They both
690 function identically to the Unix versions, as documented in "help
691 timestamp" on ICC and "help timeseal" on FICS.
693 <p>If you have a firewall between your machine and the ICS, see topic
694 <A HREF="#[B.19]">[B.19]</A>.
696 <P>If you normally have to use the "/icscomm" command line option on
697 WinBoard to log into a shell account, and then telnet to ICC or FICS
698 from there, you are going to have to run the Unix version of timestamp
699 or timeseal on the shell machine. (If the shell account is not on a
700 Unix machine, you are out of luck.) Get the appropriate version of
701 timestamp or timeseal onto the shell machine via FTP; see the help
702 files on ICC and FICS for instructions. Then simply run it when you
703 would normally run telnet. In this configuration you are not protected
704 against lag between your PC and the shell machine, or for lag caused by
705 heavy load on the shell machine itself from other users.
707 <P>For further information on timestamp and timeseal, see the help
708 files on ICC and FICS.
711 <H3><A NAME="[B.14]">[B.14] How do I play bughouse with XBoard or WinBoard?
714 XBoard and WinBoard have simple but effective bughouse support.
715 Offboard piece holdings are shown in the board window's banner, and
716 you drop offboard pieces using the right mouse button. Press it over
717 the destination square to pop up a menu of pieces.
719 <P>XBoard and WinBoard can display only one board at a time, but you
720 can observe your partner's game by running a second copy of the
721 program and logging in as a guest. (Unfortunately, this is not
722 possible if you are using the /icscomm option.) To observe your
723 partner's games automatically, use the "follow" or "pfollow" ICS
724 command; see the ICS online help for details.
727 <h3><a name="[B.16]">[B.16] What is Zippy? How can I interface a
728 chess program to the Internet Chess Servers?</a></h3>
730 Zippy is an interface that lets a compatible chess engine (such as GNU
731 Chess or Crafty) act as a computer
732 player on an Internet Chess Server. Zippy is included in both the
733 XBoard and WinBoard distributions. It is implemented as a small
734 amount of additional code within XBoard or WinBoard.
735 For documentation, see the file
736 zippy.README, included in both distributions or available
737 from my chess Web page,
739 "http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html"
740 >http://www.tim-mann/chess.html</A>.
741 The version of zippy.README on my Web page is often more up-to-date
742 than those in the XBoard/WinBoard distributions.
743 You'll also find a "biography" of Zippy and pointers to the original
744 Zippy the Pinhead comic strips on my Web page.
745 Please read zippy.README carefully before you ask me any questions about Zippy.
747 <p>Using a computer to choose your moves on a chess server is
748 considered cheating unless your account is on the computer (C) list.
749 Read "help computer" on your favorite server for details on their
750 policy. Most of the servers have plenty of computers running now, so they
751 will not be excited about having you run a new one unless you have
752 written your own chess engine. They don't really need yet another
753 Crafty or GNU Chess clone.
756 <h3><a name="[B.17]">[B.17] How can I interface my own chess program
757 to XBoard or WinBoard?</a></h3>
759 This is a non-trivial task. XBoard and WinBoard were not designed
760 with a clean interface for talking to chess programs; they were
761 written to work with an existing version of GNU Chess that expects to
762 be talking to a person. Your program has to emulate GNU Chess's
763 rather idiosyncratic command structure to work with XBoard and
764 WinBoard. We are gradually cleaning up, improving, and documenting
765 the interface as newer versions of XBoard and WinBoard come out,
768 <p>For documentation, see the file engine-intf.html, included in both
769 distributions or available from my chess Web page, <A HREF=
770 "http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html"
771 >http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html</A>.
772 The version of engine-intf.html on my Web page is often more up-to-date
773 than those in the XBoard/WinBoard distributions.
776 <h3><a name="[B.18]">[B.18] How can I recompile WinBoard from source?</a></h3>
778 The source code for WinBoard is available from the author's Web page,
780 "http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html"
781 >http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html</A>.
783 <p>WinBoard is currently developed using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0.
784 You can build the program from the MSVC++ GUI by opening the project
785 file (winboard.dsp) and telling MSVC++ to build the project. You can
786 also build it from the the command line by using the nmake program
787 supplied with MSVC++.
789 <p>To build WinBoard with the free Cygwin tools, available from <a
790 href= "http://www.cygwin.com/" >http://www.cygwin.com/</a>), use the
791 command "make -f cygwin.mak". WinBoard 4.2.5 was successfully
792 compiled with the net release of Cygwin as downloaded on 20-March-2001
793 (cygwin1.dll 1.1.8, gcc 2.95.2-6, binutils 20001221-1, flex 2.5.4-1),
794 but exhibits a command-line parsing bug; see item 511 in the ToDo file
795 that comes with WinBoard. WinBoard 4.1.0 does not compile with
796 Cygwin. WinBoard 4.0.7 is known to compile with Cygwin BL20.1.
798 <p>To build WinBoard with Borland C++ 4.5, use "borland.mak", supplied
799 with the WinBoard sources, as the Makefile. Support for Borland C++
800 was contributed by Don Fong and has not been tested by the author of WinBoard.
802 <p>WinBoard is a Win32 application, so you definitely need a compiler
803 and tool set that supports Win32. In particular, older versions of
804 DJGPP can build only 32-bit MSDOS programs; that is, programs that use
805 a DOS extender to get a 32-bit address space and do not make any
806 Windows calls. The latest versions of DJGPP are said to be able to
807 build Win32 programs when used with the proper extension package(s),
808 but this is not known to work with WinBoard. Use Cygwin instead.
810 <p>See also topic <A HREF="#[C.16]">[C.16]</A>.
813 <H3><A NAME="[B.19]">[B.19]
814 How can I use XBoard or WinBoard to talk
815 to an Internet Chess Server through a firewall or proxy?
818 <p>There is no single answer to this question, because there are many
819 different kinds of firewalls in use. They work in various different
820 ways and have various different security policies. This answer can
823 <p>Note that you can't access Internet Chess Servers through a Web proxy,
824 because they are not a Web service. You talk to them through a raw
825 TCP connection, not an HTTP connection. If you can only access the
826 Web through a proxy, there may be a firewall that stops you from
827 making direct TCP connections, but there may also be a way through it.
828 Read on for hints, and contact your local system administrator if you
829 need more information about your local configuration.
831 <p>A helpful user mailed me the following explanation of how to use
832 WinBoard with WinGate:
834 "I have managed to setup WinBoard though my WinGate proxy. I have the
835 Office version. What I needed to do was to setup the TCP/IP
836 connection to add the User/Host name and my provider service name for
837 the DNS, but I had to leave the HOST IP address blank. I have not
838 played with all the variations, so it may be just that I have the DNS
841 I hope this helps, though I don't find it very clear. I don't have
842 a copy of WinGate myself and can't help if you have questions about it.
844 <p>If you are using some other non-SOCKS firewall, read the FIREWALLS section
845 in your XBoard or WinBoard documentation (man page, info document, or
846 Help file). If you can telnet to a chess server in some way, then you
847 can almost certainly connect to it with xboard/WinBoard, though in
848 some cases you may not be able to run timestamp or timeseal. The
849 timestamp and timeseal protocols require a clean, 8-bit wide TCP
850 connection from your machine to the ICS, which some firewalls do not
853 <p>If you have a SOCKS firewall and are using <strong>XBoard</strong>,
854 you should be able to SOCKSify xboard and use it. See <a
855 href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">http://www.socks.nec.com/</a> for
856 information about SOCKS and socksification. However, if you do this,
857 you can't use timestamp or timeseal; what you really need is a
858 socksified version of timestamp or timeseal. This is hard because the
859 source code for timestamp and timeseal is proprietary; the folks
860 running the chess servers don't give it out because that would make it
861 too easy to cheat. On some versions of Unix, you may be able to
862 socksify a program that you don't have the source code to by running
863 it with an appropriate dynamic library; see <a
864 href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">http://www.socks.nec.com/</a>. For
865 others, you might be able to get a pre-built socksified version from
866 the chess server administrators. For timeseal versions, see <a
867 href="ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/timeseal/"
868 >ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/timeseal/</a>. For timestamp
869 versions, the directory would be <a
870 href="ftp://ftp.chessclub.com/pub/icc/timestamp/"
871 >ftp://ftp.chessclub.com/pub/icc/timestamp/</a>, but at this writing
872 there don't seem to be any socksified timestamps there. Once you have
873 a socksified timestamp or timeseal, simply run it with a normal,
874 non-socksified xboard in place of the standard timestamp or timeseal.
876 <p>If you have a SOCKS firewall and you are using
877 <strong>WinBoard</strong>, we now know how to make this configuration
878 work, complete with timestamp or timeseal!
880 <p>Start by getting SocksCap32. This software is freely available
881 from <a href="http://www.socks.nec.com/">http://www.socks.nec.com/</a>.
882 Install it on your machine, read the documentation, and learn to use
883 it. You may find it useful with many other programs besides WinBoard.
885 <p>Next, <strong>don't</strong> socksify WinBoard. Socksifying
886 WinBoard itself doesn't let you use it with timestamp or timeseal.
887 For some reason I don't understand -- something strange that
888 SocksCap32 does -- the socksified WinBoard runs but does nothing, and
889 timestamp/timeseal runs all by itself in its own window.
891 <p>Instead, use the following workaround. Follow the instructions
892 exactly; don't try to skip steps or simplify things.
894 <p>First, make SocksCap32 application profiles for timestamp and
895 timeseal. Use the following command lines in the SocksCap32
896 profiles. Name the first profile "timestamp" and the second
900 "c:\program files\winboard\timestamp.exe" chessclub.com 5000 -p 5000
901 "c:\program files\winboard\timeseal.exe" freechess.org 5000 -p 5000
904 <p>Second, run timestamp or timeseal by itself, socksified, using its
905 profile. This will open an unneeded, black window that will not
906 respond to typing. Minimize it to the task bar and ignore it. It will
907 go away when you exit from WinBoard.
909 <p>Next, run WinBoard using the following command line. Make a shortcut
910 or type this command into an MS-DOS Prompt box. Don't run WinBoard
911 itself socksified, just run it directly.
914 "c:\program files\winboard.exe" /ics /icshost=localhost /icsport=5000
917 <p>After you get this working, you can try getting the timestamp window to
918 auto-minimize by starting it from a shortcut instead of from the
919 SocksCap32 control window. As it says in the SocksCap32 help file, put
920 the following in the Target field of a shortcut's Properties page:
923 "c:\program files\sockscap32\sc32.exe" timestamp
926 Then select "Run: Minimized" on the same page. Do the same for timeseal.
928 <p>Another method that can work is to use a .bat file to start both
929 timestamp and WinBoard. It would look something like this:
934 REM -- Start timestamp under SocksCap32 and use WinBoard to connect to it.
935 REM -- The string "timestamp" refers to a SocksCap32 profile for timestamp.
936 REM -- Do not change it to the filename of the timestamp program!
938 start /minimized "c:\program files\sockscap32\sc32.exe" timestamp
939 cd "c:\program files\winboard"
940 winboard /ics /icshost=localhost /icsport=5000
943 <p>This workaround has a problem if you want to run two copies of
944 WinBoard at once, talking to the same chess server twice (for
945 bughouse) or to two different chess servers. If you need to do that,
946 you will need to run a separate copy of timestamp with <i>a different
947 port number</i> for each connection. You'll need to make a second set of
948 profile entries with a different value after the -p flag (say, 5001)
949 and you'll need to change the WinBoard command line /icsport=5000 for
950 the second WinBoard to match.
953 <H3><A NAME="[B.20]">[B.20]
954 How can I use XBoard or WinBoard on chess.net with accuclock?
957 <p>I believe chess.net provides a Win32 command-line version of
958 accuclock that will work with WinBoard. Please see the documentation
959 on the chess.net server itself; don't ask the author of WinBoard.
961 <p>I don't know whether chess.net provides versions of accuclock for
962 Unix at this time. Ask them.
965 <h3><a name="[B.21]">[B.21]
966 Can I get Zippy to do one or more ICS commands automatically at the
967 start or end of each game?</a></h3>
969 <p>By default, Zippy automatically sends the command "gameend" to ICS
970 at the end of each game. You can alias this command (using the ICS
971 "alias" feature) to anything you want. On ICC, you can use the
972 "multi" feature to alias gameend to several commands, but other
973 servers don't have that feature. Zippy doesn't send anything at the
974 start of the game by default.
976 <p>You can get Zippy to send one or more commands of your choosing, at
977 the start and/or end of each game, by using the -zippyGameStart and
978 -zippyGameEnd command line options, newly added in version 4.0.3.
979 Both xboard and WinBoard have (somewhat obscure) ways of getting
980 newlines into this option to send several commands. Here is an
981 example of one way to do it for each.
984 xboard -ics -zp -xrm '*zippyGameStart: say hi\nsay prepare to die\n'
986 WinBoard /ics /zp /zippyGameEnd='say thanks\nseek 5 0\nseek 2 12\n'
990 <h3><a name="[B.22]">[B.22]
991 How do I print from WinBoard?
994 WinBoard does not have built-in printing functionality.
995 If you want to print a picture of the board, press Alt+PrintScrn, run the
996 standard Windows application Paintbrush, select Paste, and print from there.
997 If you want to print a list of moves, save your game as a PGN file,
998 then open the PGN file with Notepad or any other plain text editor and
1002 <h3><a name="[B.23]">[B.23]
1003 Can I get Zippy to automatically reconnect to ICS when its connection
1006 <p>There isn't a perfect solution to this problem yet, but a pretty
1007 good one is to write a shell script (for xboard) or .bat script (for
1008 WinBoard) that automatically restarts the program whenever it exits.
1009 Use the -xexit flag so that you don't get a popup dialog that must be
1010 dismissed with the OK button before the program will exit. The gap in
1011 this solution is that your connection to ICS can sometimes get into a
1012 state where the program does not notice that the connection is broken
1013 until the next time it tries to send a command. Perhaps some future
1014 version of xboard/WinBoard will have an option to send a harmless
1015 command every five minutes or so.
1017 <p>Anyway, here is a sample Windows .bat file that restarts WinBoard each
1018 time it exits. Thanks to Jason Williamson. It assumes that you have put
1019 your computer account's name and password in a file named logon.ini.
1024 REM -- Start WinBoard in Zippy mode, and restart it each time it exits.
1025 REM -- Add or change parameters as needed for your application.
1028 start /w winboard /zp /ics /icslogon logon.ini /xexit /xautoraise
1029 REM -- The next line is to have a short delay setup for 139 seconds.
1030 REM -- Leave it out if it doesn't work on the version of Windows you use.
1031 TYPE NUL | CHOICE.COM /N /CY /TY,99 >NUL
1035 <p>Here is a Unix shell script to do the same thing for xboard.
1036 It's a bit more elaborate. It is based on the script I use for the
1037 original Zippy. It logs all ICS output to a file named zippy.out,
1038 and it lets you type commands to Zippy by running "cat > zippy.fifo".
1042 host="204.178.125.65 -icsport 5000 -telnet -telnetProgram timestamp"
1043 #host="164.58.253.13 -icsport 5000 -telnet -telnetProgram timeseal"
1046 ZIPPYPASSWORD='something'
1047 export ZIPPYPASSWORD
1048 ZIPPYPASSWORD2='orother'
1049 export ZIPPYPASSWORD2
1050 ZIPPYLINES=`pwd`/all.lines
1052 ZIPPYGAMEEND='say Yow, that was FUN!
1055 zippylogon=`pwd`/logon.ini
1056 DISPLAY=`hostname`:0.0
1058 mv -f $out ${out}.old
1062 ( while [ true ] ; do cat -u $fifo ; done ) | \
1063 ( while [ true ] ; do
1064 xboard -iconic -ics -icshost $host \
1065 -zt -zp -xbell -xanimate \
1066 -xautosave -xquiet -fcp "gnuchessx -h" \
1067 -icslogon $zippylogon -xexit -autoflag -xautoraise $*
1069 done ) > $out 2>&1 &
1073 <h3><a name="[B.24]">[B.24]
1074 The chess engines are too strong and always beat me. How can I adjust
1075 the difficulty level to make them weaker?</a></h3>
1077 <p>The simplest way to get that effect is to make sure the
1078 XBoard/WinBoard Auto Flag option is off, set a very fast time control
1079 so that the chess engine can't think for long, but take as much time
1080 over your own moves as you want. Also feel free to use Retract Move if
1083 <p>Many chess coaches will let you switch sides after
1084 they get a stronger position so that you can get experience playing
1085 positions where you are winning. You can try this with XBoard/WinBoard
1086 by using the Machine White or Machine Black menu command to make the
1087 machine take over your position.
1089 <p>The -depth command-line option to XBoard/WinBoard can also be used to
1090 weaken the engine (see the man page or Help file). It's a bit of a
1091 nuisance to set command line options in Windows, but see topic <A
1092 HREF="#[C.7]">[C.7]</A> for instructions.
1094 <p>Other ways of weakening engines are engine-specific. Many of them
1095 let you adjust various parameters, and if you choose bad settings, the
1096 engine will play more poorly. Consult whatever documentation came with
1097 the engine you are using.
1100 <h3><a name="[B.25]">[B.25]
1101 May I use the piece bitmaps from XBoard/WinBoard in my own program?</a></h3>
1103 <p>The piece bitmaps used in XBoard and WinBoard were designed by
1104 Elmar Bartel. He released them under the <a
1105 href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public
1106 License</a>. This means that if your program is also free software
1107 distributed under the GPL, you can use them freely. If your program
1108 is distributed under some other license, including commercial,
1109 shareware, or non-GPL freeware, then you cannot use the bitmaps unless
1110 you obtain special permission from Elmar. See the file README.bitmaps
1111 that comes with the XBoard and WinBoard source code for more
1112 information and an email address you can write to.
1114 <HR><H2><A NAME="[C]">[C] XBoard and WinBoard, bugs and problems</A></H2>
1116 <HR><H3><A NAME="[C.1]">[C.1] I can't build XBoard
1117 because the X11/Xaw/... include files are not found.</A></H3>
1119 These are the header files for the Athena Widgets library, which XBoard uses
1120 heavily. Some versions of Unix don't supply these files, but they are part of
1121 the standard X distribution, freely available from MIT.
1123 <P>For general information on getting missing X sources, see the FAQ on
1124 comp.windows.x. Note that you may be missing only the header files, or you
1125 may be missing the libraries themselves too.
1127 <P>HP-UX users are missing only the header files. You can get them by
1128 anonymous FTP as follows. (But first check with your system
1129 administrator to see if someone else at your site has already done
1130 this.) Get the archive file /hpux9/X11R5/Core/Xaw-5.00.tar.gz (Xaw
1131 header files) via anonymous FTP from the site hpux.csc.liv.ac.uk
1132 (138.253.42.172), or one of the other official sites---Germany:
1133 hpux.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de (129.13.200.57), US: hpux.cae.wisc.edu
1134 (144.92.4.15), France: hpux.cict.fr (192.70.79.53) or Netherlands:
1135 hpux.ced.tudelft.nl (130.161.140.100). Unpack the archive using gzip
1136 and follow the instructions in its README and/or HPUX.Install files.
1137 Thanks to Richard Lloyd for this information.
1139 <P>If you have the Xaw header files installed in a different place
1140 than the other X11 headers, you may need to configure XBoard with an
1141 extra flag to help it find them. For example, if yours are in
1142 /foo/bar/X11/Xaw, try this:
1146 (setenv CFLAGS -I/foo/bar ; configure)
1149 Also see topic <A HREF="#[C.2]">[C.2]</A>.
1152 <H3><A NAME="[C.2]">[C.2] Configuring or building XBoard fails due to
1153 missing header files, missing libraries, or undefined symbols.
1156 Perhaps you have the X server and client programs installed on your
1157 machine, but not the X header files and link-time libraries. If so,
1158 you can run existing X programs, but you cannot compile a new X
1159 program from source code. In this case the XBoard configure script
1160 will fail and will tell you to look at this question in the FAQ. Many
1161 GNU/Linux distributions put the headers and libraries in a separate
1162 package, which you might not have installed. If you are using RedHat,
1163 install the XFree86-devel package. If you are using some other
1164 kind of Unix, ask your system administrator where to find the X header
1165 files and link-time libraries. If this is not your problem, read on.
1167 <p>The configure script for XBoard looks for X libraries and header
1168 files in some common places. Sometimes it fails: If yours are
1169 installed in an odd place, it may not find them at all. If you have
1170 more than one version of X installed on your system, it may find the
1171 "wrong" one, or occasionally it may find libraries from one version
1172 and incompatible header files from another. You can work around these
1173 problems by telling the configure script where the files are. For
1177 configure --x-includes=/odd/place/include \
1178 --x-libraries=/odd/place/lib
1181 <P>The directory named in the argument to --x-includes must have a
1182 subdirectory "X11" that contains the actual .h files. That is, if
1183 your X.h file has full pathname /odd/place/X11R6/include/X11/X.h, then
1184 you must give the argument --x-includes=/odd/place/X11R6/include.
1186 <P>Some linkers have bugs that cause bogus error messages when you try
1187 to link X programs. The configure script includes a workaround for a
1188 bug of this kind that exists in some SunOS 4.x.x installations. See
1189 the FAQ on comp.windows.x for more information about problems of this
1192 <P>If all else fails, check whether anyone else at your site has been able to
1193 compile any X programs on your system. Your X installation might be buggy.
1194 If so, the system administrator at your site might know how to fix or work
1197 <P>Also see topic <A HREF="#[C.1]">[C.1]</A>.
1199 <HR><H3><A NAME="[C.3]">[C.3] I have problems using WinBoard on ICS
1200 with a modem. I'm not running SLIP or PPP, but just dialing in to an
1201 ordinary login account ("shell account").</A></H3>
1203 Here are solutions to some common problems in this area.
1205 <P>Some people want to connect to ICS through HyperTerminal or some other
1206 terminal program first, then run WinBoard. This is not how it works.
1207 WinBoard wants to talk directly with your modem, acting as a terminal program
1208 itself. Start out with the modem "on hook" (not making a call).
1210 <P>Run WinBoard with a command line like this (adding more options if desired):
1213 WinBoard /ics /icscom com1
1216 Use com2, com3, or com4 in place of com1 if your modem is connected to one of
1219 <P>After you start WinBoard, you may need to change some of the options in the
1220 Communications dialog (on the Options menu). The dialog has the usual options
1221 for talking to modems: bits per second, bits per byte, parity, number of stop
1222 bits. You will probably want to use Save Settings Now when you're done.
1224 <P>Next, type dialing commands to your modem in the text window that WinBoard
1225 creates. You may need to turn off Local Line Editing on the Options menu
1226 while you are typing commands to your modem. Turn it back on when you're
1227 done. See the WinBoard Help file for instructions if you see your typing
1228 echoed an extra time after you hit Enter.
1231 <H3><A NAME="[C.4]">[C.4]
1232 I have problems using WinBoard on ICS with Windows 95 and SLIP
1233 or PPP. When trying to start up, it gets the error "Address family
1234 not supported by protocol family" (or some equally strange message).
1237 WinBoard is a 32-bit application, but some Winsock (TCP/IP) implementations
1238 support only 16-bit applications. You get a strange looking error message
1239 if you try to use a 32-bit application because
1240 there is no standard Winsock error code number
1241 for "32-bit application not supported."
1243 <P>Microsoft TCP/IP works with both 16-bit and
1244 32-bit applications, supports SLIP, PPP, Ethernet, etc., and is included
1245 with Windows 95 and later Windows systems.
1246 If possible, I recommend that you uninstall
1247 whatever Winsock you are using and install Microsoft TCP/IP instead.
1248 For more information, see
1250 "http://walden.mo.net/~rymabry/95winfaq.html"
1251 >http://walden.mo.net/~rymabry/95winfaq.html (the Win95-L FAQ)</A>.
1253 <P>Trumpet Winsock 2.1 (and earlier) supports only 16-bit
1254 applications, and hence does not work with WinBoard. But there is a
1255 beta-test release available that does support 32-bit applications.
1256 I have not tried it with WinBoard, but it
1257 should work. See Trumpet's Web page
1259 "http://www.trumpet.com.au/wsk/winsock.htm"
1260 >http://www.trumpet.com.au/wsk/winsock.htm</A>
1261 for more information.
1263 <P>The 16-bit versions of America On-Line's software do not support
1264 32-bit Winsock applications. Get the 32-bit version. At one time the
1265 32-bit version was called "AOL for Windows 95," but I imagine that has
1266 changed. Hopefully the current versions are all 32-bit.
1268 <P>A few versions of Winsock may have bugs that prevent
1269 Windows timestamp/timeseal from working with them. I'm not sure if
1270 such bugs exist in any versions that actually have 32-bit support,
1271 so this point might be moot. Again, Microsoft TCP/IP is known to work.
1273 <HR><H3><A NAME="[C.5]">[C.5] When I try to run WinBoard, I get the
1274 message "Failed to start chess program gnuchess on localhost: NO
1275 LANGFILE (file gnuchess.lan not found)".</A></H3>
1277 <p>This message means that WinBoard is trying to run GNU Chess, but
1278 GNU Chess cannot find a file that it needs, named gnuchess.lan.
1279 If you see it, you've probably customized WinBoard's /fcp, /fd, /scp,
1280 and/or /sd options and made a mistake in the process. Review what
1281 you did, and see the WinBoard help file.
1284 <H3><A NAME="[C.6]">[C.6] I want to use XBoard or WinBoard as an Internet
1285 Chess Server interface, but the ICS Client option is grayed out on the
1288 XBoard and WinBoard have three major modes that can't be changed from the
1289 menus: local chess engine mode,
1290 ICS mode, and standalone mode.
1292 <p>With XBoard, you have to set the mode using command-line options.
1293 Local chess engine mode is the default, -ics selects ICS mode, and
1294 -ncp ("no chess program") selects standalone mode.
1296 <p>With WinBoard, if you don't set the mode using command-line
1297 options, you get a dialog box asking which mode you want. To bypass
1298 the dialog box, use -cp ("chess program") for local chess engine mode,
1299 or -ics or -ncp as with XBoard. Also see topic <A HREF="#[C.7]">[C.7]</A>.
1302 <H3><A NAME="[C.7]">[C.7] How do I give command-line options to
1303 a Windows program like WinBoard?</A></H3>
1305 <P>There are many ways; pick your favorite:
1308 <LI>Type the command line into an MS-DOS Prompt box. Example:
1311 <LI>Make a Windows shortcut for WinBoard. You can do this by
1312 right-dragging WinBoard.exe to the desktop and selecting "Create
1313 Shortcut(s) Here" from the menu that appears. Right-click on the
1314 shortcut, select Properties, and click the Shortcut tab. The
1315 command-line text box is labelled "Target" instead of "Command line"
1316 just to confuse you. Edit the text in this box, adding the command
1317 line options to the end.</LI>
1319 <LI>Choose Run from the Start menu, or File / Run from the Program
1320 Manager or File Manager, and type the command line into the dialog you
1321 get. You may have to give WinBoard's full drivespec and filename if
1322 it is not in a directory on your search path.</LI>
1324 <LI>Make a Program Manager icon for WinBoard. You can do this by
1325 dragging WinBoard.exe from the File Manager into the Program Manager,
1326 or by using File / New in the Program Manager. Select the icon and
1327 choose File / Properties. Edit the Command Line text box to add the
1328 command-line options to the end.</LI>
1332 <H3><A NAME="[C.9]">[C.9]
1333 When I exit from WinBoard after using it to play against a chess
1334 program on my machine, the chess program keeps running in the background.
1337 <p>Be sure you have the current versions of WinBoard and the chess
1338 engine you are using. WinBoard 3.4.1 and earlier had a bug that
1339 caused this problem to occur with all chess engines. A buggy chess
1340 engine that does not respond to the "quit" command will also cause
1343 <p>If you still see this problem, you can stop the rogue chess engine
1344 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, selecting the chess engine process from the
1345 menu, and pressing the End Task button.
1348 <h3><a name="[C.12]">[C.12]
1350 opponents often get extra time after they make their moves?
1351 Why do I sometimes lose time off my clock after I make my move?
1354 If you are playing with the ICS incremental clock, both you and your
1355 opponent get a set amount of extra time after each move.
1357 <p>If your or your opponent has netlag, your opponent might appear to
1358 get extra time, especially if your opponent is using timestamp or
1359 timeseal. The ICS charges each player who is using timestamp or
1360 timeseal only for the time between when the player received his
1361 opponent's move and the time he sent his own move. Thus delays in
1362 network transmission do not count against either player. But WinBoard
1363 counts down the display of your opponent's clock on your screen under
1364 the assumption that there is no netlag. When his move comes in, if
1365 there was netlag, the ICS may not have really charged him for that
1366 much time, and WinBoard corrects the clock to what the ICS says it
1369 <p>If you are not using timestamp or timeseal, you may appear to lose
1370 time off your clock at some point after you make your move. In this
1371 case, the ICS charges you for the time between when it sent you your
1372 opponent's move and the time it received your move. Thus delays in
1373 network transmission count against you. WinBoard stops counting down
1374 the display of your clock on your screen (and starts your opponent's)
1375 when you make your move. When the ICS echoes your move back to you, it
1376 may have charged you for more time than that, and WinBoard corrects
1377 the clocks to what the ICS says they should read.
1379 <p>See "help lag" and "help timestamp" or "help timeseal" on your ICS for
1380 more detailed information.
1383 <h3><a name="[C.13]">[C.13]
1384 I can't run WinBoard unless I delete the WinBoard.ini file each time!
1387 <p>Most people don't have this problem, but two or three people using
1388 Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or 4 have reported it. I have no
1389 idea what causes this problem. Contrary to what was reported in a
1390 previous version of this FAQ, reinstalling the service pack after
1391 installing WinBoard does not seem to solve the problem.
1394 <h3><a name="[C.15]">[C.15]
1395 I get errors compiling XBoard's parser.c.
1398 <p>The file parser.c is automatically generated from parser.l. The
1399 copy included with XBoard 4.0.2 was generated by lex on Tru64 Unix and
1400 has problems compiling and linking on current GNU/Linux versions. The
1401 copy included with XBoard 4.0.3 was generated by flex on a GNU/Linux
1402 machine, but it too won't necessarily work on other versions of Unix.
1403 If you have this problem, you can fix it by deleting parser.c and
1404 letting the Makefile re-create it from parser.l. This will work if
1405 you have either lex or flex on your system. Flex is available in all
1406 GNU/Linux distributions and can be obtained at no charge from the Free
1407 Software Foundation, www.fsf.org.
1410 <h3><a name="[C.16]">[C.16]
1411 I get an error building WinBoard from source because "flex" is not found.
1414 <p>The file parser.c is automatically generated from parser.l. The
1415 Makefile included with the WinBoard source kit has a rule for
1416 generating parser.c using the program "flex", which will fail if you
1417 don't have flex. However, the source kit also includes a ready-made
1418 copy of parser.c, so you don't really need flex unless you have made
1419 changes to parser.l. Check that you still have a copy of parser.c; if
1420 you don't, unpack the WinBoard source zip file again to get one.
1421 Either set the last-modified time of parser.c to be later than that of
1422 parser.l, delete parser.l, or comment out the Makefile rule for
1423 building parser.c from parser.l, and then try building WinBoard again.
1425 <p>If you do want to change parser.l and rebuild parser.c, you can get
1426 flex as part of the free Cygwin kit from
1427 <a href="http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/"
1428 >http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/</a>. You can
1429 probably also get flex for Windows by itself from various other places
1430 around the Internet. It is free software distributed by the Free
1431 Software Foundation, www.fsf.org.
1434 <h3><a name="[C.17]">[C.17]
1435 XBoard hangs shortly after connecting to an ICS when used with dxterm,
1436 cmdtool, dtterm, kterm, konsole, or other substitutes for xterm.
1439 <p>After connecting to a chess server, XBoard 4.0.2 and later sends an
1440 escape sequence to its terminal that is meant to display your handle
1441 and the ICS host name (for example, "user@chessclub.com") in the
1442 terminal's banner and icon. It seems that several of the alternative
1443 X terminal programs have a bug that makes them hang when sent this
1447 around the problem by using xterm, nxterm, rxvt, aterm, xiterm, or
1448 gnome-terminal, all of which seem to work fine. In fact, current
1449 versions of kterm and konsole seem to work fine too, so if you are
1450 having problems with one of them, be sure you are not running an
1453 <p>Alternatively, you can disable this feature by commenting out the
1454 body of DisplayIcsInteractionTitle in xboard.c and recompling xboard.
1457 <h3><a name="[C.18]">[C.18]
1458 The WinBoard pieces show up in the wrong colors, appear distorted,
1459 or are not visible at all.
1462 <p>This can happen if you have a bug in your Windows display driver.
1463 Check with the manufacturer of your display card, the manufacturer of
1464 your computer, or Microsoft to see if there is an updated driver
1465 available. You can usually download updated drivers from the Web.
1467 <p>If you can't find an updated driver, you can try running Windows
1468 using a different number of colors and/or disabling some of the
1469 hardware acceleration features on your display card. To change the
1470 number of colors, go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel /
1471 Display / Settings / Color Palette. To disable hardware acceleration
1472 features, go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display /
1473 Settings / Advanced Properties / Performance / Hardware Acceleration.
1475 <p>It's also possible that Windows has the right driver for your
1476 hardware already but you are not using it. It may help to reinstall
1477 your driver. Go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / System
1478 and delete your display card (maybe even your monitor too), then
1479 reboot. Windows should automatically re-detect your card and monitor
1480 and re-install the drivers; if it doesn't, run Start / Settings /
1481 Control Panel / Add New Hardware to force it to.
1483 <p>If all else fails, try Monochrome mode. On WinBoard's menus, go
1484 to Options / Color and check Monochrome. WinBoard will display in black
1488 <H3><A NAME="[C.19]">[C.19] XBoard or WinBoard tells me "Error: first chess
1489 program (...) exited unexpectedly".</A></H3>
1491 <p>This message means that your chess engine crashed, probably due to
1492 a bug in the engine, or because you have it configured incorrectly.
1493 You can try running XBoard or WinBoard again with the "-debug" flag on
1494 the command line. This will print out all the messages received from
1495 the chess engine. (With WinBoard, the messages go into a file called
1496 WinBoard.debug; with XBoard, they go to the xterm that you started
1499 <P>If you are using GNU Chess and you see this problem as soon as it
1500 starts up, most likely GNU Chess is exiting with an error message. If
1501 you see the message "NO LANGFILE", it means that you did not install
1502 GNU Chess correctly, and it is unable to find the file gnuchess.lang.
1503 Make sure that you defined LIBDIR in the gnuchess Makefile, and that
1504 gnuchess.lang is in that directory. If gnuchess.lang is not there,
1505 you probably didn't type "make install" in the gnuchess src directory;
1506 you must do this to install gnuchess.lang (and the gnuchess book). If
1507 you defined LIBDIR to something that is not an absolute pathname (that
1508 is, to something that does not start with a "/"), GNU Chess will work
1509 only if you run it from the GNU Chess "src" directory where you built
1512 <hr><h3><a name="[C.20]">[C.20]
1513 XBoard tells me "Warning: Cannot allocate colormap entry", or
1514 "too few colors available; trying monochrome mode", or
1515 "XPM pieces cannot be used in monochrome mode".
1518 <p>You are running your X server with 8-bit color depth, and you are running
1519 some program that has used up all 256 of your colors. Netscape tends
1520 to do this, or maybe you have a background image that uses up all of
1523 <p>If you have a modern machine, you probably have enough display
1524 memory to run your X server with 16-, 24-, or 32-bit color depth. If
1525 you're using "startx" to start the X server, try giving the command as
1526 "<tt>startx -- -bpp 24</tt>" (or 16, or 32). On newer X servers you
1527 may have to use -depth instead of -bpp. Further details on
1528 configuring your X server are beyond the scope of this FAQ.
1530 <p>If you must run in 8-bit mode, try the following:
1531 Avoid background images that use up all your colors. If you
1532 run Netscape, try starting it up with the <tt>-install</tt> command-line
1533 option; this gives Netscape its own private colormap that X will
1534 switch to when Netscape has the keyboard focus.
1536 <P>If all else fails, another possibility is to run xboard in
1537 monochrome (black and white) mode by giving it the <tt>-mono</tt>
1538 command-line option. XBoard will try this by itself in some cases.
1539 Monochrome mode works only with bitmap pieces, not pixmap pieces, so
1540 trying to use it may give you the error "XPM pieces cannot be used in
1541 monochrome mode". To get around this, either use the -bitmapDirectory
1542 command line option to point XBoard to the directory containing the
1543 bitmap pieces included with the XBoard source code, or rebuild XBoard
1544 with pixmap support disabled, using "./configure --disable-xpm ; make
1547 <hr><h3><a name="[C.21]">[C.21]
1548 When I log in to freechess.org, the Enter key doesn't work, and I
1549 have to use Ctrl+J instead. But when I use WinBoard, Ctrl+J doesn't
1550 work either, so I'm stuck.
1553 <p>This is a pretty rare problem. It should only arise if you have to
1554 reach freechess.org by telnetting (or connecting with WinBoard
1555 /icsport=23) from a Windows PC to a Unix box, and then telnetting from
1556 there to freechess.org. The Enter key should always work when
1557 connecting directly from your PC to freechess.org.
1559 <p>The best way to get around the problem is to run timeseal on the
1560 intermediate Unix box instead of telnet. Get the appropriate version
1561 of timeseal for your box from ftp.freechess.org and follow the
1562 directions in the help files on FICS.
1564 <p>If you can't run timeseal for some reason, there are some things
1565 you can do to make telnet stay in line mode instead of going to
1566 character mode. Then the Enter key will work. First, try "telnet
1567 freechess.org 5000" instead of "telnet freechess.org."
1568 If that still doesn't work, then when the Enter key stops working,
1569 type the following. Here <tt><</tt> and <tt>></tt> surround the
1573 <Ctrl+S><Ctrl+]>mode line<Enter>
1576 <hr><h3><a name="[C.22]">[C.22]
1577 XBoard says, "Failed to start first chess program gnuchessx
1578 on localhost: gnuchessx: No such file or directory."
1581 <p>XBoard is looking for GNU Chess 4.0. If you didn't want to use
1582 XBoard with GNU Chess, please see topic <A HREF="#[C.6]">[C.6]</A>.
1583 If you did want to use GNU Chess 4.0, be sure you have it installed and
1584 that it is on your $PATH. If you wanted to use GNU Chess 5 instead,
1585 see topic <A HREF="#[D.6]">[D.6]</A>.
1588 <H2><A NAME="[D]">[D] Crafty and other topics</A></H2>
1590 <H3><A NAME="[D.1]">[D.1] What is XChess?</A></H3>
1592 XChess is an older chessboard program that is no longer supported. XChess was
1593 written for X version 10, and you may or may not be able to build and run it
1596 <P>XChess has only one significant feature that is not present in XBoard: Two
1597 humans can play chess using XChess on different machines, without using the
1598 Internet Chess Server as an intermediary. This feature is of interest only if
1599 you don't have network connectivity to the Internet Chess Server.
1601 <P>Note: There actually have been several different programs called "XChess" in
1602 circulation at various times. The above describes one that was associated
1606 <H3><A NAME="[D.2]">[D.2] What is Winsock Chess?</A></H3>
1608 Winsock Chess is a program that lets two people play chess across a
1609 network. It runs only under Microsoft Windows. Some of the code in
1610 Winsock Chess is derived from GNU Chess, but it is not maintained by
1611 the GNU Chess team. You can get a copy from the Internet Chess
1612 Library; see topic <A HREF="#[A.2]">[A.2]</A>. For more information,
1613 contact its author, Donald Munro, ccahdm@beluga.upe.ac.za.
1616 <H3><A NAME="[D.3]">[D.3] What is Crafty?</A></H3>
1618 Crafty is a freely-available chess program written by Bob Hyatt.
1619 Bob is the main author of the well-known chess program Cray
1620 Blitz. Crafty is a very strong program, its code is available, commented
1621 and fairly readable, and its author is actively working on improvements.
1623 <p>You can download Crafty from <a
1624 href="ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/"
1625 >ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/</a>. Start by getting the <a
1626 href="ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/read.me" >read.me</a> file and
1627 reading it. Among other things, this file contains instructions on
1628 how to install Crafty as a command-line application on your machine.
1630 <p>There is a Crafty mailing list.
1631 To subscribe, send email to majordomo@cis.uab.edu, with
1632 "subscribe crafty-list" in the body.
1635 <H3><A NAME="[D.4]">[D.4] How do I use Crafty with XBoard?</A></H3>
1637 <p>First, you need to get Crafty and install it as a command-line
1638 application on your machine. See topic <A HREF="#[D.3]">[D.3]</A>.
1640 <p>To use Crafty with XBoard, give the -fcp
1641 parameter like this:
1644 xboard -fcp "./crafty" -fd <I>crafty_directory</I>
1647 Here <I>crafty_directory</I> is the directory where you installed Crafty.
1648 You can add more xboard options at the end of the command line.
1650 <p>Crafty 15.14 or later is required to work properly with XBoard
1651 4.0.0 or later. We generally recommend using the latest versions of
1652 both XBoard and Crafty.
1655 <H3><A NAME="[D.5]">[D.5] How do I use Crafty with WinBoard?</A></H3>
1657 <p>First, you need to get Crafty and install it as a command-line
1658 application on your machine. See topic <A HREF="#[D.3]">[D.3]</A>.
1659 It is best to use the latest version of Crafty with the latest version
1660 of WinBoard to make sure all features are compatible and function
1661 correctly. You can install Crafty in any directory you like.
1663 <p>You also need to get WinBoard and install it in the normal way
1664 using its built-in installer. You can do that either before or after
1667 <p>After both Crafty and WinBoard are installed separately, follow the
1668 directions in the WinBoard Help file (included with WinBoard) for
1669 connecting new chess engines to WinBoard.
1671 <p>If you want to have Crafty act as an automated computer player on a
1672 chess server, see topic <A HREF="#[B.16]">[B.16]</A>. Before you try
1673 to get that working, be sure you can play against Crafty locally,
1674 first without WinBoard, then with it. Also be sure you can use
1675 WinBoard to play on the chess server yourself, without having Crafty
1676 connected to it. You have to crawl before you can walk!
1679 <H3><A NAME="[D.6]">[D.6] How do I use GNU Chess 5 with XBoard?</A></H3>
1681 <p>By default, XBoard still tries to use GNU Chess 4 by running the
1682 command "gnuchessx". That's why if you don't have GNU Chess 4, you
1683 get the error message "Failed to start first chess program gnuchessx
1684 on localhost: gnuchessx: No such file or directory."
1686 <p>If you have GNU Chess 5, the command should be "gnuchess xboard"
1687 instead. To make XBoard use this command, give the -fcp parameter
1691 xboard -fd <I>gnuchess_directory</I> -fcp "./gnuchess xboard"
1694 Here <I>gnuchess_directory</I> is the directory where you installed
1695 GNU Chess 5 and its book. You can add more xboard options at the
1696 end of the command line.
1700 ** End of XBoard/WinBoard FAQ **