Options Menu - XBoard

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2.7 Options Menu

Time Control: Pops up a sub-menu where you can set the time-control parameters interactively. Allows you to select classical or incremental time controls, set the moves per session, session duration, and time increment. Also allows specification of time-odds factors for one or both engines. If an engine is given a time-odds factor N, all time quota it gets, be it at the beginning of a session or through the time increment or fixed time per move, will be divided by N. The shifted Alt+T key is a keyboard equivalent.
Common Engine: Pops up a sub-menu where you can set some engine parameters common to most engines, such as hash-table size, tablebase cache size, maximum number of processors that SMP engines can use, and where to find the Polyglot adapter needed to run UCI engines under XBoard. The feature that allows setting of these parameters on engines is new since XBoard 4.3.15, so not many XBoard/WinBoard engines respond to it yet, but UCI engines should. It is also possible to specify a GUI opening book here, i.e. an opening book that XBoard consults for any position a playing engine gets in. It then forces the engine to play the book move, rather than to think up its own, if that position is found in the book. The book can switched on and off independently for either engine. The shifted Alt+U key is a keyboard equivalent.
Adjudications: Pops up a sub-menu where you can enable or disable various adjudications that XBoard can perform in engine-engine games. The shifted Alt+J key is a keyboard equivalent. You can instruct XBoard to detect and terminate the game on checkmate or stalemate, even if the engines would not do so, to verify engine result claims (forfeiting engines that make false claims), rather than naively following the engine, to declare draw on positions which can never be won for lack of mating material, (e.g. KBK), or which are impossible to win unless the opponent seeks its own demise (e.g. KBKN). For these adjudications to work, ‘Test Legality’ should be switched on. It is also possible to instruct XBoard to enforce a 50-move or 3-fold-repeat rule and automatically declare draw (after a user-adjustable number of moves or repeats) even if the engines are prepared to go on. It is also possible to have XBoard declare draw on games that seem to drag on forever, or adjudicate a loss if both engines agree (for 3 consecutive moves) that one of them is behind more than a user-adjustable score threshold. For the latter adjudication to work, XBoard should be able to properly understand the engine's scores. To facilitate the latter, you can inform xboard here if the engines report scores from the viewpoint of white, or from that of their own color.
Game List: Pops up a dialog where you can select the PGN tags that should appear on the lines in the game list, and their order.
Always Queen: If this option is off, XBoard brings up a dialog box whenever you move a pawn to the last rank, asking what piece you want to promote it to. If the option is true, your pawns are always promoted to queens. Your opponent can still under-promote. The shifted Ctrl-Q key is a keyboard equivalent.
Animate Dragging: If Animate Dragging is on, while you are dragging a piece with the mouse, an image of the piece follows the mouse cursor. If Animate Dragging is off, there is no visual feedback while you are dragging a piece, but if Animate Moving is on, the move will be animated when it is complete.
Animate Moving: If Animate Moving is on, all piece moves are animated. An image of the piece is shown moving from the old square to the new square when the move is completed (unless the move was already animated by Animate Dragging). If Animate Moving is off, a moved piece instantly disappears from its old square and reappears on its new square when the move is complete. The shifted Ctrl-A key is a keyboard equivalent.
Auto Comment: If this option is on, any remarks made on ICS while you are observing or playing a game are recorded as a comment on the current move. This includes remarks made with the ICS commands say, tell, whisper, and kibitz. Limitation: remarks that you type yourself are not recognized; XBoard scans only the output from ICS, not the input you type to it.
Auto Flag: If this option is on and one player runs out of time before the other, XBoard will automatically call his flag, claiming a win on time. The shifted Ctrl-F key is a keyboard equivalent. In ICS mode, Auto Flag will only call your opponent's flag, not yours, and the ICS may award you a draw instead of a win if you have insufficient mating material. In local chess engine mode, XBoard may call either player's flag and will not take material into account (?).
Auto Flip View: If the Auto Flip View option is on when you start a game, the board will be automatically oriented so that your pawns move from the bottom of the window towards the top.
Auto Observe: If this option is on and you add a player to your gnotify list on ICS, XBoard will automatically observe all of that player's games, unless you are doing something else (such as observing or playing a game of your own) when one starts. The games are displayed from the point of view of the player on your gnotify list; that is, his pawns move from the bottom of the window towards the top. Exceptions: If both players in a game are on your gnotify list, if your ICS highlight variable is set to 0, or if the ICS you are using does not properly support observing from Black's point of view, you will see the game from White's point of view.
Auto Raise Board: If this option is on, whenever a new game begins, the chessboard window is deiconized (if necessary) and raised to the top of the stack of windows.
Auto Save: If this option is true, at the end of every game XBoard prompts you for a file name and appends a record of the game to the file you specify. Disabled if the saveGameFile command-line option is set, as in that case all games are saved to the specified file. See Load and Save options.
Blindfold: If this option is on, XBoard displays the board as usual but does not display pieces or move highlights. You can still move in the usual way (with the mouse or by typing moves in ICS mode), even though the pieces are invisible.
Flash Moves: If this option is on, whenever a move is completed, the moved piece flashes. The number of times to flash is set by the flashCount command-line option; it defaults to 3 if Flash Moves is first turned on from the menu.
If you are playing a game on an ICS, the board is always oriented at the start of the game so that your pawns move from the bottom of the window towards the top. Otherwise, the starting orientation is determined by the flipView command line option; if it is false (the default), White's pawns move from bottom to top at the start of each game; if it is true, Black's pawns move from bottom to top. See User interface options.
Get Move List: If this option is on, whenever XBoard receives the first board of a new ICS game (or a different game from the one it is currently displaying), it retrieves the list of past moves from the ICS. You can then review the moves with the ‘Forward’ and ‘Backward’ commands or save them with ‘Save Game’. You might want to turn off this option if you are observing several blitz games at once, to keep from wasting time and network bandwidth fetching the move lists over and over. When you turn this option on from the menu, XBoard immediately fetches the move list of the current game (if any).
Highlight Dragging: If Highlight Dragging is on, and the option -showTargetSquares is also on in the settings file, all squares a piece that is 'picked up' with the mouse can legally move to are highighted with a fat colored dot in the highlightColor (non-captures) or premoveHighlightColor (captures). Legality testing must be on for XBoard to know how the piece moves.
Highlight Last Move: If Highlight Last Move is on, after a move is made, the starting and ending squares remain highlighted. In addition, after you use Backward or Back to Start, the starting and ending squares of the last move to be unmade are highlighted.
Highlight with Arrow: Causes the highlighting described in Highlight Last Move to be done by drawing an arrow between the highlighted squares, so that it is visible even when the width of the grid lines is set to zero.
Move Sound: If this option is on, XBoard alerts you by playing a sound after each of your opponent's moves (or after every move if you are observing a game on the Internet Chess Server). The sound is not played after moves you make or moves read from a saved game file. By default, the sound is the terminal bell, but on some systems you can change it to a sound file using the soundMove option; see below.
If you turn on this option when using XBoard with the Internet Chess Server, you will probably want to give the set bell 0 command to the ICS, since otherwise the ICS will ring the terminal bell after every move (not just yours). (The .icsrc file is a good place for this; see ICS options.)
ICS Alarm: When this option is on, an alarm sound is played when your clock counts down to the icsAlarmTime (by default, 5 seconds) in an ICS game. For games with time controls that include an increment, the alarm will sound each time the clock counts down to the icsAlarmTime. By default, the alarm sound is the terminal bell, but on some systems you can change it to a sound file using the soundIcsAlarm option; see below.
One-Click Moving: If this option is on, XBoard does not wait for you to click both the from- and the to-square, or drag the piece, but performs a move as soon as it is uniqely specified. This applies to clicking an own piece that only has a single legal move, clicking an empty square or opponent piece where only one of your pieces can move (or capture) to. Furthermore, a double-click on a piece that can only make a single capture will cause that capture to be made. Promoting a Pawn by clicking its to-square will suppress the promotion popup, and make it promote to Queen.
Periodic Updates: If this option is off (or if you are using a chess engine that does not support periodic updates), the analysis window will only be updated when the analysis changes. If this option is on, the Analysis Window will be updated every two seconds.
Ponder Next Move: If this option is off, the chess engine will think only when it is on move. If the option is on, the engine will also think while waiting for you to make your move. The shifted Ctrl-P key is a keyboard equivalent.
Popup Exit Message: If this option is on, when XBoard wants to display a message just before exiting, it brings up a modal dialog box and waits for you to click OK before exiting. If the option is off, XBoard prints the message to standard error (the terminal) and exits immediately.
Popup Move Errors: If this option is off, when you make an error in moving (such as attempting an illegal move or moving the wrong color piece), the error message is displayed in the message area. If the option is on, move errors are displayed in small pop-up windows like other errors. You can dismiss an error pop-up either by clicking its OK button or by clicking anywhere on the board, including down-clicking to start a move.
Premove: If this option is on while playing a game on an ICS, you can register your next planned move before it is your turn. Move the piece with the mouse in the ordinary way, and the starting and ending squares will be highlighted with a special color (red by default). When it is your turn, if your registered move is legal, XBoard will send it to ICS immediately; if not, it will be ignored and you can make a different move. If you change your mind about your premove, either make a different move, or double-click on any piece to cancel the move entirely.
Quiet Play: If this option is on, XBoard will automatically issue an ICS set shout 0 command whenever you start a game and a set shout 1 command whenever you finish one. Thus, you will not be distracted by shouts from other ICS users while playing.
Show Coords: If this option is on, XBoard displays algebraic coordinates along the board's left and bottom edges.
Hide Thinking: If this option is off, the chess engine's notion of the score and best line of play from the current position is displayed as it is thinking. The score indicates how many pawns ahead (or if negative, behind) the chess engine thinks it is. In matches between two machines, the score is prefixed by ‘W’ or ‘B’ to indicate whether it is showing White's thinking or Black's, and only the thinking of the engine that is on move is shown. The shifted Ctrl-H key is a keyboard equivalent.
Test Legality: If this option is on, XBoard tests whether the moves you try to make with the mouse are legal and refuses to let you make an illegal move. The shifted Ctrl-L key is a keyboard equivalent. Moves loaded from a file with ‘Load Game’ are also checked. If the option is off, all moves are accepted, but if a local chess engine or the ICS is active, they will still reject illegal moves. Turning off this option is useful if you are playing a chess variant with rules that XBoard does not understand. (Bughouse, suicide, and wild variants where the king may castle after starting on the d file are generally supported with Test Legality on.)
Save Settings Now: Selecting this menu item causes the current XBoard settings to be written to the settings file, so they will also apply in future sessions. Note that some settings are 'volatile', and are not saved, because XBoard considers it too unlikely that you want those to apply next time. In particular this applies to the Chess program names, and all options giving information on those Chess programs (such as their directory, if they have their own opening book, if they are UCI or native XBoard), or the variant you are playing. Such options would still be understood when they appear in the settings file in case they were put there with the aid of a text editor, but they would disappear from the file as soon as you save the settings.
Save Settings on Exit: Setting this option has no immediate effect, but causes the settings to be saved when you quit XBoard. What happens then is otherwise identical to what happens when you use select "Save Settings Now", see there.