-- Flip View
- Inverts your view of the chess board for the duration of the
-current game. Starting a new game returns the board to normal.
-The v 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.
-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 posititions
-which can never be won for lack of mating material, (e.g. KBK),
-or which are impossble 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 insruct XBoard to enforce a 50-move or 3-fold-repeat
-rule and automtically 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 cosecutive 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 faclitate the latter, you can inform xboard here if
-the engines report scores from the viewpoint of white, or from that of their own color.
-
- Engine Settings
- 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 tht allows setting of these parameters on
-engines is new since XBoard 4.3.15, so not many 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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 underpromote.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-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 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.
-
- 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.
-
- Old Save Style
- If this option is off, XBoard saves games in PGN
-(portable game notation) and positions in FEN (Forsythe-Edwards
-notation). If the option is on, a save style that is compatible
-with older versions of XBoard is used instead.
-The old position style is more human-readable
-than FEN; the old game style has no particular advantages.
-
- 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.
-
- 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 popup windows like other errors.
-You can dismiss an error popup either by clicking its OK button or by
-clicking anywhere on the board, including downclicking 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.
-
- 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.
-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.)
+
- General Options
- The following items to set option values appear in the dialog
+summoned by the general Options menu item.
+
- Absolute Analysis Scores
- Controls if scores on the Engine Output window during analysis
+will be printed from the white or the side-to-move point-of-view.
+
- Almost Always Queen
- If this option is on, 7th-rank pawns automatically change into
+Queens when you pick them up,
+and when you drag them to the promotion square and release them there,
+they will promote to that.
+But when you drag such a pawn backwards first,
+its identity will start to cycle through the other available pieces.
+This will continue until you start to move it forward;
+at which point the identity of the piece will be fixed,
+so that you can safely put it down on the promotion square.
+If this option is off, what happens depends on the
+option
alwaysPromoteToQueen,
+which would force promotion to Queen when true.
+Otherwise XBoard would bring up a dialog
+box whenever you move a pawn to the last rank, asking what piece
+you want to promote to.
+ - 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 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.
+
+
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.
+
- 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.
+
- Drop Menu
- Controls if right-clicking the board in crazyhouse / bughouse
+will pop up a menu to drop a piece on the clicked square
+(old, deprecated behavior)
+or allow you to step through an engine PV
+(new, recommended behavior).
+
- Enable Variation Trees
- If this option is on, playing a move in Edit Game or Analyze mode
+while keeping the Shift key pressed will start a new variation.
+You can then recall the previous line through the ‘Revert’ menu item.
+When off, playing a move will truncate the game and append the move
+irreversibly.
+
- 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.
+
- 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
- Enables the sounding of an audible signal when the computer performs a move.
+For the selection of the sound, see ‘Sound Options’.
+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.)
+
- 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 or other methods for selecting an under-promotion,
+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.
+
- Play Move(s) of Clicked PV
- If this option is on, right-clicking a PV in the Engine Output window
+during Analyze mode will cause the first move of that PV to be played.
+You could also play more than one (or no) PV move by moving the mouse
+to engage in the PV walk such a right-click will start,
+to seek out another position along the PV where you want to continue
+the analysis, before releasing the mouse button.
+
- 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.
+
- Scores in Move List
- If this option is on, XBoard will display the depth and score
+of engine moves in the Move List, in the format of a PGN comment.
+
- Show Coords
- If this option is on, XBoard displays algebraic coordinates
+along the board's left and bottom edges.
+
- Show Target Squares
- If this option is on, 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.
+
- 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.)
+
- Flash Moves
- Flash Rate
- If this option is non-zero, whenever a move is completed,
+the moved piece flashes the specified number of times.
+The flash-rate setting determines how rapidly this flashing occurs.
+
- Animation Speed
- Determines the duration (in msec) of an animation step,
+when ‘Animate Moving’ is swiched on.
+
- Zoom factor in Evaluation Graph
- Sets the valueof the
evalZoom option,
+indicating the factor by which the score interval (-1,1) should be
+blown up on the vertical axis of the Evaluation Graph.
+
- 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 way book moves are chosen can be influenced through the settings of
+book depth and variety.
+After both sides have played more moves than the specified depth,
+the book will no longer be consulted.
+When the variety is set to 50, moves will be played with the probability
+specified in the book.
+When set to 0, only the move(s) with the highest probability will be played.
+When set to 100, all listed moves will be played with equal pobability.
+Other settings interpolate between that.
+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.
+
+
- ICS Options
- The following options occur in a dialog summoned by the
+ICS Options menu item.
+
- Auto Kibitz
- Setting this option when playing with or aginst a chess program on an ICS
+will cause the last line of thinking output of the engine before its move
+to be sent to the ICS in a kibitz command.
+In addition, any kibitz message received through the ICS from
+an opponent chess program will be diverted to the engine-output window,
+(and suppressed in the console),
+where you can play through its PV by right-clicking it.
+
- 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 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.
+ - Background Observe
- Setting this option will make XBoard suppress display of any boards
+from observed games while you are playing.
+In stead the last such board will be remembered,
+and shown to you when you right-click the board.
+This allows you to peek at your bughouse partner's game when you want,
+without disturbing your own game too much.
+
- Dual Board
- Setting this option in combination with ‘Background Observe’
+will display boards of observed games while you are playing
+on a second board next to that of your own game.
+
- 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).
+
- 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.
+
- Seek Graph
- Setting this option will cause XBoard to display an graph of
+currently active seek ads when you left-click the board
+while idle and logged on to an ICS.
+
- Auto-Refresh Seek Graph
- In combination with the ‘Seek Graph’ option this
+will cause automatic update of the seek graph while it is up.
+This only works on FICS and ICC,
+and requires a lot of bandwidth on a busy server.
+
- Premove
- Premove White
- Premove Black
- First White Move
- First Black Move
- 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.
+
+
You can also enter premoves for the first white and black moves
+of the game.
+
- ICS Alarm
- ICS Alarm Time
- When this option is on, an alarm sound is played when your clock
+counts down to the icsAlarmTime in an ICS game.
+(By default, the time is 5 seconds, but you can pecify other values
+with the Alarm Time spin control.)
+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.
+
- Colorize Messages
- Ticking this options causes various types of ICS messages do be
+displayed with different foreground or background colors in the console.
+The colors can be individually selected for each type,
+through the accompanying text edits.
+
+
- Match Options
- Summons a dialog where you can set options important for playing automatic
+matches between two chess programs
+(e.g. by using the ‘Machine Match’ menu item in the ‘Mode’ menu).
+
- Tournament file
- To run a tournament, XBoard needs a file to record its progress,
+so it can resume the tourney when it is interrupted.
+When you want to conduct anything more complex than a simple
+two-player match with the currently loaded engines,
+(i.e. when you select a list of participants),
+you must not leave this field blank.
+When you enter the name of an existing tournament file,
+XBoard will ignore all other input specified in the dialog,
+and will take them from that tournament file.
+This resumes an interrupted tournament, or adds another XBoard
+agent playing games for it to those that are already doing so.
+Specifying a not-yet-existing file will cause XBoard to create it,
+according to the tournament parameters specified in the rest of the dialog,
+before it starts the tournament on âOKâ.
+Provided that you specify participants;
+without participants no tournament file will be made, but other entered values
+(e.g. for the file with opening positions) will take effect.
+Default: configured by the
defaultTourneyName option.
+ - Sync after round
- Sync after cycle
- The sync options, when on, will cause WinBoard to refrain from starting games
+of the next round or cycle before all games of the previous round or cycle are finished.
+This guarantees correct ordering in the games file,
+even when multiple XBoard instances are concurrently playing games for the same tourney.
+Default: sync after cycle, but not after round.
+
- Select Engine
- Tourney participants
- With the Select Engine drop-down list you can pick an engine from your list
+of installed engines in the settings file, to be added to the tournament.
+The engines selected so far will be listed in the âTourney participantsâ memo.
+The latter is a normal text edit, so you can use normal text-editing functions
+to delete engines you selected by accident, or change their order.
+Do not type names yourself there, because names that do not exactly match
+one of the names from the drop-down list will lead to undefined behavior.
+
- Tourney type
- Here you can specify the type of tournament you want.
+XBoardâs intrinsic tournament manager support round-robins (type = 0),
+where each participant plays every other participant, and (multi-)gauntlets,
+where one (or a few) so-called âgauntlet enginesâ play an independent set of opponents.
+In the latter case, you specify the number of gauntlet engines.
+E.g. if you specified 10 engines, and tourney type = 2,
+the first 2 engines each play the remaining 8.
+A value of -1 instructs XBoard to play Swiss; for this to work an external
+pairing engine must be specified through the
pairingEngine option.
+Each Swiss round will be considered a tourney cycle in that case.
+Default:0
+ - Number of tourney cycles
- Default number of Games
- You can specify tourneys where every two opponents play each other multiple times.
+Such multiple games can be played in a row,
+as specified by the ânumber of games per pairingâ,
+or by repeating the entire tournament schedule a number of times
+(specified by the ânumber of tourney cyclesâ).
+The total number of times two engine meet will be the product of these two.
+Default is 1 cycle;
+the number of games per pairing is the same as the default number of match games,
+stored in your settings file through the
defaultMatchGames option.
+ - Save Tourney Games
- File where the tournament games are saved
+(duplicate of the item in the ‘Save Game Options’).
+
- Game File with Opening Lines
- File with Start Positions
- Game Number
- Position Number
- Rewind Index after
- These items optionally specify the file with move sequences or board positions the tourney
+games should start from.
+The corresponding numbers specify the number of the game or position in the file.
+Here a value -1 means automatic stepping through all games on the file,
+-2 automatic stepping every two games.
+The Rewind-Index parameter causes a stepping index to reset to one after reaching
+a specified value.
+A setting of -2 for the game number will also be effective in a tournament without
+specifying a game file, but playing from the GUI book instead.
+In this case the first (odd) games will randomly select from the book,
+but the second (even) games will select the same moves from the book as the previous game.
+(Note this leads to the same opening only if both engines use the GUI book!)
+Default: No game or position file will be used. The default index if such a file is used is 1.
+
- Disable own engine bools be default
- Setting this option reverses the default situation for use of the GUI opening book
+in tournaments from what it normally is, namely not using it.
+So unless the engine is installed with an option to explicitly specify it should
+not use the GUI book (i.e.
-firstHasOwnBookUCI true),
+it will be made to use the GUI book.
+ - Replace Engine
- Upgrade Engine
- With these two buttons you can alter the participants of an already running tournament.
+After opening the Match Options dialog on an XBoard that is playing for the tourney,
+you will see all the tourney parameters in the dialog fields.
+You can then replace the name of one engine by that of another
+by editing the ‘participants’ field.
+(But preserve the order of the others!)
+Pressing the button after that will cause the substitution.
+With the ‘Upgrade Engine’ button the substitution will only affect future games.
+With ‘Replace Engine’ all games the substituted engine has already played will
+be invalidated, and they will be replayed with the substitute engine.
+In this latter case the engine must not be playing when you do this,
+but otherwise there is no need to pause the tournament play
+for making a substitution.
+
- Clone Tourney
- Pressing this button after you have specified an existing tournament file
+will copy the contents of the latter to the dialog,
+and then puts the originally proposed name for the tourney file back.
+You can then run a tourney with the same parameters
+(possibly after changing the proposed name of the tourney file for the new tourney)
+by pressing 'OK'.
+
+
- Load Game Options
- Summons a dialog where you can set the
autoDisplayComment and
+autoDisplayTags options, (which control popups when viewing loaded games),
+and specify the rate at which loaded games are auto-played,
+in seconds per move (which can be a fractional number, like 1.6).
+You can also set search criteria for determining which games
+will be displayed in the Game List for a multi-game file,
+and thus be eligible for loading:
+ - Elo of strongest player
- Elo of weakest player
- year
- These numeric fields set thresholds (lower limits) on the Elo rating of the mentioned player,
+or the date the game was played.
+Defaults: 0
+
- Search mode
- This setting determines which positions in a game will be considered a match
+to the position currently displayed in the board window
+when you press the ‘find position’ button in the Game List.
+You can search for an exact match,
+a position that has all shown material in the same place,
+but might contain additional material,
+a position that has all Pawns in the same place,
+but can have the shown material anywhere,
+a position that can have all shown material anywhere,
+or a position that has material between certain limits anywhere.
+For the latter you have to place the material that must be present
+in the four lowest ranks of the board,
+and optional additional material in the four highest ranks of the board.
+You can request the optional material to be balanced.
+The ‘narrow’ button is similar in fuction to the ‘find position’ button,
+but only searches in the already selected games,
+rather than the complete game file,
+and can thus be used to refine a search based on multiple criteria.
+
- number of consecutive positions
- When you are searching by material, rather than for an exact match,
+this parameter indicates forhowmany consecutive game positions
+the same amount of material must be on the board before it is
+considered a match.
+
- Also match reversed colors
- Also match left-right flipped position
- When looking for matching positions rather than by material,
+these settings determine whether mirror images
+(in case of a vertical flip in combination with color reversal)
+will be also considered a match.
+The left-right flipping is only useful after all castling rights
+have expired (or in Xiangqi).
+
+
- Save Game Options
- Summons a dialog where you can specify the files on which XBoard should
+automatically save any played or entered games,
+(the
saveGameFile option),
+or the final position of such games (the savePositionfile option).
+You can also select 'auto-save' without a file name,
+in which case XBoard will prompt the user for a file name after each game.
+In ICS mode you can limit the auto-saving to your own games
+(i.e. suppress saving of observed games).
+You can also set the default value for the PGN Event tag that will
+be used for each new game you start.
+Various options for the format of the game can be specified as well,
+such as whether scores and depths of engine games should be saved as comments,
+and if a tag with info about the score with which the engine came out of book
+should be included.
+For Chess, always set the format to PGN, rather than "old save stye"!
+
+
- 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.
+
+
- Sound Options
- Summons a dialog where you can specify the sounds that should accompany
+various events that can occur XBoard.
+Most events are only relevant to ICS play,
+but the move sound is an important exception.
+For each event listed in the dialog,
+you can select a standard sound from a menu.
+You can also select a user-supplied sound file,
+by typing its name into the designated text-edit field first,
+and then selecting "Above WAV File" from the menu for the event.
+A dummy event has been provided for trying out the sounds with the
+"play" button next to it.
+The directory with standard sounds, and the external program for playing
+the sounds can be specified too, but normally you would not touch these
+once XBoard is properly installed.
+When a move sound other than 'None' is selected,
+XBoard alerts you by playing that 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.
+
+
- 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.
+
+
Note that XBoard no longer pays attention to options values specified
+in the .Xresources file.
+(Specifying key bindings there will still work, though.)
+To alter the default of volatile options, you can use the following method:
+Rename your ~/.xboardrc settings file (to ~/.yboardrc, say), and create
+a new file ~/.xboardrc, which only contains the options
+
+
-settingsFile ~/.yboardrc
+ -saveSettingsFile ~/.yboardrc
+
+ This will cause your settings to be saved on ~/.yboardrc in the future,
+so that ~/.xboardrc is no longer overwritten.
+You can then safely specify volatile options in ~/.xboardrc, either
+before or after the settingsFile options.
+Note that when you specify persistent options after the settingsFile options
+in ~/.xboardrc, you will essentially turn them into volatile options
+with the specified value as default, because that value will overrule
+the value loaded from the settings file (being read later).
+
- 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.
-