Legal details ------------- PolyGlot 1.3 Copyright 2004-2005 Fabien Letouzey. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA See the file "copying.txt" for details. General ------- PolyGlot 1.3 (2005/06/03). PolyGlot is a "UCI adapter". It connects a UCI chess engine to an xboard interface such as WinBoard. UCI2WB is another such adapter (for Windows). PolyGlot tries to solve known problems with other adapters. For instance, it detects and reports draws by fifty-move rule, repetition, etc ... Official distribution URL ------------------------- The official distribution web site is Leo Dijksman's WBEC Ridderkerk: http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ This is where you should be looking for PolyGlot updates in the future. Install ------- PolyGlot should have its own directory. The INI files for engines should also be put there. Dirtier solutions are needed when BookThinker is used though. On Windows the files "polyglot.exe" and "cygwin1.dll" (which you can download from http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/) are needed. On Linux and Mac OS X only the file "polyglot_linux" or "polyglot_mac" is required. Compiling --------- The distribution comes up with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X binaries. Compiling is therefore not necessary on those systems unless you want to make a change in the program. In any case this section describes the compiling procedure, it is safe to skip it. PolyGlot is a POSIX application (Unix compatible), and was developed on Linux using g++ (the GNU C++ compiler). 1) Unix You should be able to compile it on any POSIX-compliant operating system (*not* Windows) with the following command line (or similar): > g++ -O2 -o polyglot *.cpp IMPORTANT: In "io.cpp", the variable "UseCR" should be set to "false". A Makefile is provided but might not work on your system ... 2) Windows On Windows, you *must* use Cygnus GCC to compile PolyGlot. IMPORTANT: In "io.cpp", the variable "UseCR" should be set to "true". Usage ----- PolyGlot acts as an xboard engine. There should be no difference with a normal chess program as far as the interface (e.g. WinBoard) is concerned. PolyGlot is invoked using "polyglot ". Note that PolyGlot will look for the INI file in the current directory. If no is given, "polyglot.ini" is selected. To use PolyGlot with XBoard, you would type something like this: > xboard -fd 'polyglot_dir' -fcp 'polyglot engine.ini' Quotes are important when there is a space in the argument. INI file -------- There should be a different INI file for each engine. Sections are composed of "variable = value" lines. See the sample INI files in the "example" directory. NOTE: There can be spaces in variable names or values. Do not use quotes. 1) [PolyGlot] section This section is used by PolyGlot only. The engine is unaware of these options. The list of available options is detailed below in this document. 2) [Engine] section This section contains engine UCI options. PolyGlot does not understand them, but sends the information to the engine at startup (converted to UCI form). You can add any UCI option that makes sense to the engine (not just the common options about hash-table size and tablebases). NOTE: use INI syntax, not UCI. For example "OwnBook = true" is correct. It will be replaced by PolyGlot with "setoption name OwnBook value true" at engine startup. Standard UCI options are "Hash", "NalimovPath", "NalimovCache" and "OwnBook". Hidden options like "Ponder" or "UCI_xxx" are automatic and should not be put in an INI file. The other options are engine-specific. Check their name using a UCI GUI or launch the engine in a console and type "uci". Options ------- These should be put in the [PolyGlot] section. - "EngineName" (default: UCI name) This is the name that will appear in the xboard interface. It is cosmetic only. You can use different names for tweaked versions of the same engine. If no "Engine Name" is given, the UCI name will be used. - "EngineDir" (default: ".") Full path of the directory where the engine is installed. You can use "." (without the quotes) if you know that PolyGlot will be launched in the engine directory or the engine is in the "path" and does not need any data file. - "EngineCommand" Put here the name of the engine executable file. You can also add command-line arguments. Path searching is used and the current directory will be "EngineDir". NOTE: Unix users are recommended to prepend "./"; this is required on some secure systems. - "Log" (default: false) Whether PolyGlot should log all transactions with the interface and the engine. This should be necessary only to locate problems. - "LogFile" The name of the log file. Note that it is put where PolyGlot was launched from, not into the engine directory. WARNING: Log files are not cleared between sessions, and can become very large. It is safe to remove them though. - "Resign" (default: false) Set this to "true" if you want PolyGlot to resign on behalf of the engine. NOTE: Some engines display buggy scores from time to time although the best move is correct. Use this option only if you know what you are doing (e.g. you always check the final position of games). - "ResignMoves" (default: 3) Number of consecutive moves with "resign" score (see below) before PolyGlot resigns for the engine. Positions with only one legal move are ignored. - "ResignScore" (default: 600) This is the score in centipawns that will trigger resign "counting". - "ShowPonder" (*** NEW ***, default: true) Show search information during engine pondering. Turning this off might be better for interactive use in some interfaces. - "KibitzMove" (*** NEW ***, default: false) Whether to kibitz when playing a move. - "KibitzPV" (*** NEW ***, default: false) Whether to kibitz when the PV is changed (new iteration or new best move). - "KibitzCommand" (*** NEW ***, default: "tellall") xboard command to use for kibitzing, normally "tellall" for kibitzing or "tellothers" for whispering. - "KibitzDelay" (*** NEW ***, default: 5) How many seconds to wait before starting kibitzing. This has an affect only if "KibitzPV" is selected, move kibitzes are always sent regardless of the delay. Work arounds ------------ Work arounds are identical to options except that they should be used only when necessary. Their purpose is to try to hide problems with various software (not just engines). The default value is always correct for bug-free software. IMPORTANT: Any of these work arounds might be removed in future versions of PolyGlot. You are strongly recommended to contact the author of faulty software and truly fix the problem. In PolyGlot 1.3 there is only one optional work around: - "UCIVersion" (default: 2) The default value of 2 corresponds to UCI+. Use 1 to select plain UCI for engines that have problems with UCI+. Opening Book ------------ *** NEW *** PolyGlot 1.3 provides a minimal opening-book implementation. New options can be added to the [PolyGlot] section: - "Book" (default: false) Indicates whether a PolyGlot book should be used. This has no effect on the engine own book (which can be controlled with the UCI option "OwnBook" in the [Engine] section). In particular, it is possible to use both a PolyGlot book and an engine book. In that case, the engine book will be used whenever PolyGlot is out of book. Remember that PolyGlot is unaware of whether the engine is itself using a book or not. - "BookFile" The name of the (binary) book file. Note that PolyGlot will look for it in the directory it was launched from, not in the engine directory. Of course, full path can be used in which case the current directory does not matter. Note that there is no option to control book usage. All parameters are fixed when compiling a PGN file into a binary book (see below). This is purposeful and is not likely to change. Using a book does not require any additional memory, this can be important for memory-limited tournaments. A default book "fruit.bin" is provided in the archive. Note that this book is very small and should probably not be used in serious games. I hope that users will make other books available in the future. Book Making ----------- *** NEW *** You can compile a PGN file into a binary book using PolyGlot on the command line. At the moment, only a main (random) book is provided. It is not yet possible to control opening lines manually. I am working on it though. Usage: "polyglot make-book ". "make-book" options are: - "-pgn" Name of the input PGN file. PolyGlot should support any standard-conforming file. Let me know if you encounter a problem. - "-bin" Name of the output binary file. I suggest ".bin" as the extension but in fact PolyGlot does not care. - "-max-ply" (default: infinite) How many plies (half moves) to read for each game. E.g. if set to "20", only the first 10 full moves of each game will be scanned. - "-min-game" (default: 3) How many times must a move be played to be kept in the book. In other words, moves that were played too rarely will be left out. If you scan full games "2" seems a minimum, but if you selected lines manually "1" will make sense. Example: "polyglot make-book -pgn games.pgn -bin book.bin -max-ply 30". Building a book is usually very fast (a few minutes at most). Note however that a lot of memory may be required. To reduce memory usage, select a ply limit. History ------- 2004/04/30: PolyGlot 1.0 - first public release. 2004/10/01: PolyGlot 1.1 - added "StartupWait" and "PonderWorkAround" ("AutoQuit" was available in version 1.0 but not documented). - fixed a minor bug that could prevent "AutoQuit" from working with some engines. 2005/01/29: PolyGlot 1.2 - rewrote engine initialisation and UCI parsing to increase UCI-standard compliance - added multi-move resign - added an internal work around for engines hanging with WinBoard 2005/06/03: PolyGlot 1.3 - added opening book - added kibitzing - added "ShowPonder" option Known bugs ---------- *** IMPORTANT *** There is a bug (!) in the xboard automaton. The bug is related to searching in draw positions (e.g. 50-move rule or repetition). I had only been able to make PolyGlot crash by using analysis mode and performing manual takebacks. I believe that this bug can only happen in highly-interactive use (e.g. manual analysis). It is present in all versions of PolyGlot, including this one. I attempted a work around in February. I vaguely remember the change prevents crashing (not sure) but it is possible that PolyGlot now gets stuck in some rare case, i.e. it refuses to produce a move. In any case, the bug cannot occur silently, e.g. in a game that terminated normally. Because of the small expected impact (nobody ever reported it to me) and because fixing the bug would require a whole redesign of the xboard module, I have no intention of working on it at the moment (!). Make sure to let me know if it appeared in any circounstance, thanks! In particular if the bug ever occurs during a non-interactive session (e.g. engine vs. engine game), then I will do something. Thanks ------ Big thanks go to: - Dann Corbit for spending a lot of time compiling, testing, making files available, etc ... - Leo Dijksman for hosting the PolyGlot distribution on his web site (see Links) and also for thorough testing - Tord Romstad, Joshua Shriver and George Sobala for compiling and testing on Mac OS X - users in the WinBoard forum for their feedback and encouraging words: Roger Brown, Leo Dijksman, Igor Gorelikov, Mogens Larsen, Volker Pittlik, Norm Pollock, Günther Simon and Salvo Spitaleri in particular Links ----- - Tim Mann's Chess Pages: http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html - Leo Dijksman's WBEC Ridderkerk: http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ - Volker Pittlik's Winboard Forum: http://wbforum.volker-pittlik.name/ Contact me ---------- You can contact me at fabien_letouzey@hotmail.com If I am not available, you can discuss PolyGlot issues in Volker Pittlik's Winboard Forum: http://wbforum.volker-pittlik.name/ In fact for questions regarding specific Windows-only engines, you are advised to ask directly in the WinBoard forum, as I don't have Windows myself. The end ------- Fabien Letouzey, 2005/06/03.