The WinBoard Gold Pack 4.4.0
+For the ultimate WinBoard experience!
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+The WinBoard Gold Pack 4.4.0+For the ultimate WinBoard experience!+ |
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+UCI engines need the Polyglot adapter to communicate with WinBoard. +As far as WinBoard is concerned, Polyglot is the engine. +Polyglot has to be instructed to which real engine it should 'connect', +and it takes this information from file, known as a Polyglot .ini file. +Apart from telling polyglot which UCI engine to run, +Polyglot alo has to supply all paramter settings for this UCI engine +that WInBoard doesn't. +And UCI engines usually need a lot more support from their GUI than WinBoard engines. +Polyglot has to fill in the gaps, again from information stored in the Polyglot .ini file. +
+This leaves us with the problem to fill that Poglot .ini file with all the required info. +For the engine name, location and standard parameters this is not such a big problem: +we could copy the .ini file of another engine, and just change the name in it. +But every UCI engine defines its own engine-specific options, +and they all do it in different ways, needing different values for them. +Polyglot GUI is a program that figures out what options a UCI engine needs, +and what their defaut settings what should be. +It then can create a Polyglot .ini file for that engine that contins all this information. +
+Navigate to the Polyglot14w folder of the WinBoard Gold Pack. +This folder contains two application files, polyglot itself +(which is there ony for running by WinBoard), +and Polyglot GUI. +Double-click the latter to start Polyglot GUI. +A file-selector window will pop, though which you can browse to one of your UCI engines. +By double-clicking the engine application file in the corresponding engine folder, +you will make Polyglot GUI interrogate this engine in UCI protocol, +to learn which options it supports and requires. +In this example we have used Fruit 2.1 for this purpose. +
+After selecting the engine, a window that is divided in a right and left part will appear. +On the left you will see a set of controls for the engine-specific options, +on the right the options for Polyglot (which are thus always the same). +Both parts of the screen have a vertical slider, as the number of options is usually too large to fit the window. +Fortunately all options are already preset to their default value, +and unless you know very well what an option does, it is best to leave it there. +So we will now only discuss the options that require attention. +
+We start wit the Polyglot settings on the right. +From top to bottom we see: Engine name, installation folder and name of the application. +In fact this is what we just entered by clicking the engine application, so it is always correct. +Then we must select if Polyglot wil use a book on behalf of the engine, +and where to find this book file (which must be a book in Polyglot format). +Although WinBoard is also able to consult a book on behalf of the engines, +it currently always consults the same book for both engines. +So it does not make much sense to ut the same general book here as WinBoard is already using. +But some UCI engines are dependent on Polyglot for their opening book, +although it is a book that is made especially for them. +For such engines it would make sense to put the book dedicated to them here. +Then they can use their private book, while the opponent is using another one. +Fruit downloads usually comes with an opening book called "book_small.bin", +and we could type that in the book field, provided that we have put it in the Polyglot14w folder +with the other Polyglot books, including the general book "default.bin" that came with the WinBoard Gold Pack. +If we prefer to keep the book in the Fruit2_1 folder, +we must type "../Fruit2_1/book_small.bin" here (without the quotes). +This is not really needed, though, as Fruit is perfectly able to consult its own book. +(Polyglot and Fruit use the same book format, as they are by the same author!) +
+Next check box and text field only have to be completed if we want to make a log file +(recording all communication between Polyglot and WinBoard), which makes little sense for normal use. +(It is meant for debugging.) +Then we can control if Polyglot must be able to resign on behalf of the engine. +(UCI engines cannot resign by themselves.) +
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++The left part of the Polyglot GUI window will look different for every engine, +as it represents the engine-specific options. +Some options are standard, though. +These are shown at the top. +We startd there entering the size of the hash table. +(Future Polyglot versions might overrule this with the value specified in WinBoard, +but for now it is an important engine parameter.) +The check box that follows is not important, +as Polylot will translate and transmit the ponder command from WinBoard to the engine in real time, +and is not dependent on a static setting gven in the Polyglot .ini file. +If you want to run matches between 2 engines, select about 1/4 of your computer's memory size. +
+Next you would have to specify if the engine has an "own" book, +i.e. one that it can consult without the aid of Polyglot. +We already mentioned that for Fruit you can do both, because the format of ts own book +is the same as hat of a Polyglot book. +But in general, that will not be the case, and books downloaded with the engine might have +an unknown proprietry formt. +Then it is really essential to put the name of that book here, +and not in the right part as Polyglot book, as Polyglot wouldn't understand any of it. +In the Fruit example, the following options are already specialist options for tuning the engine, +and we leave them alone. +
+SMP engines might have another important parameter, the number of CPUs they must use. +The name for this option is not standardized, +but contains something like "threads", "cores", or "CPUs" in its description. +Better not use values larger than the number of cores your computer has if you plan to play without ponder, +and even half of tat when you want to play with ponder on. +
++The last, and most important step is to save the settings we just made in a Polyglot .ini file. +To this end we must first type the name of the file we want, +which is the name that we also use when installing the engine in the PSWBTM engine database. +This name must be unique, as all Polyglot .ini files sit in the same folder in the +configuration the WinBoard Gold Pack uses. +So never call it polyglot.ini, as Polyglot GUI proposes. +For Fruit we would call it fruit.ini. +If we have multiple versions of Fruit on our computer they all must have their own .ini file +with its own unique name. +After having typed this name, we click the "Save" button on the bottom right. +That terminates Polyglot GUI, +and leaves the .ini file in the Polyglot14w folder (which is where Polyglot expects it). +
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