--- /dev/null
+<html>\r
+<header>\r
+<title>WGP: Board and Pieces</title>\r
+</header>\r
+<body>\r
+<table cellpadding="20"><tr><td>\r
+<h1>The WinBoard Gold Pack 4.4.0</h1>\r
+<h2>For the ultimate WinBoard experience!</h2>\r
+</td><td>\r
+<img src="mini.gif">\r
+</td></tr></table>\r
+<h3>Using a Bitmap Image for Chess Board</h3>\r
+<p>\r
+WinBoard 4.4 allows the user to use arbitrary images for the board squares.\r
+This feature was first introduced in\r
+<a href="http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/winboard_x.htm">Winboard_x</a>.\r
+The images have to be given as a bitmap, and the board squares are cut out of it.\r
+The Winboard_x home page shows some examples of this,\r
+and hosts the bitmap files needed to acheive them for download.\r
+The direct links are listed below.\r
+</p><p>\r
+The first step is to download the image.\r
+Of course you could also provide one yourself.\r
+The format must be bitmap (.bmp), but if you have an image in another format\r
+(.jpg, .gif) you can use MicroSoft Paint to convert it to .bmp;\r
+simply open the image file in Paint, and the use the "File -> Save as..." menu \r
+to save it as bitmap.\r
+The format in which you save can be selected at the bottom of the save dialog.\r
+</p><p>\r
+You will need two bitmaps, one for the light squares,the other for the dark.\r
+They have to be placed in the folder 'textures',\r
+which is already premade in the WinBoard folder of this package\r
+(~\WinBoard\textures).\r
+The bitmaps will have to be at least 129x129 \r
+(the largest square size used by winBoard),\r
+but using a larger bitmap will provide more variety in the squares that WinBoard \r
+cuts out of it.\r
+</p><p>\r
+Next step is to tell WinBoard to use the bitmaps.\r
+For this the options /liteBackTextureFile="..." and /darkBackTextureFile="..." exist.\r
+They can be put as arguments on the command line,\r
+in the winboard.ini file, or in special .ini files called from the command line.\r
+</p>\r
+<pre>\r
+/liteBackTextureFile="textures/wood_l.bmp"\r
+/darkBackTextureFile="textures/wood_d.bmp"\r
+/liteBackTextureMode=2\r
+/darkBackTextureMode=2\r
+/overrideLineGap=0\r
+</pre>\r
+<p>\r
+When board textures are used, the black lines between the squares that WinBoard usually draws\r
+often are spoiling the nice look.\r
+With the /overrideLineGap option you can set them narrower, or make them disappear altogether.\r
+(The number gives the width in pixels.)\r
+Note that WinBoard colors these lines for highlighting from- and to-squares of moves,\r
+so if you make the lines invisibly narrow, you better highlight with an Arrow.\r
+(You can enable this form of highlighting in the "Options -> General..." menu.\r
+The TextureMode options determine how squares cut out of the bitmaps are randomly\r
+rotated before being glued together to form the board.\r
+</p>\r
+<h3>Having Many Pre-defined Board Looks</h3>\r
+<p>\r
+If you don't want these settings to be permanently stored in your winboard.ini file,\r
+e.g. because you frequently want to change between different customized looks,\r
+you can put the options listed above in a small .ini file,\r
+such as the ~\WinBoard\wood.ini that was provided with this package.\r
+You can then summon them up at any time by giving "@wood.ini" (without the quotes)\r
+as an extra option on the bottom line of the startup dialog,\r
+or even make a separate shortcut that has this option on the "target" line.\r
+</p>\r
+<h3>Redefining the Piece Symbols</h3>\r
+<p>\r
+For changing the appearence of the pieces, \r
+you will need to use a true-type font to define the piece symbols.\r
+Such a true-type font can be scaled to any board size.\r
+How to do this is decriped on a separate page of this tutorial.\r
+</p>\r
+<h3>Links</h3>\r
+<p>\r
+<a href="fonts.html">How to Customize the Piece Symbols</a>\r
+</p>\r
+<p>\r
+<a href="shortcuts.html">Customizing WinBoard through Shortcuts</a>\r
+</p>\r
+<h3>Some Texture Bitmaps to Download</h3>\r
+<p>\r
+<a href="http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/zip/WbxSandy.zip">Sandy</a>\r
+</p><p>\r
+<a href="http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/zip/WbxClouds.zip">Clouds</a>\r
+</p><p>\r
+<a href="http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/zip/WbxBpWood.zip">Wood</a>\r
+</p><p>\r
+<a href="http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/zip/WbxDave.zip">Wood</a> (already included in the WinBoard Gold Pack)\r
+</p>\r
+</body>\r
+</html>
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projects / xboard.git / blobdiff