From: H.G.Muller Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 14:44:04 +0000 (+0200) Subject: Creat news page for4.9.0 X-Git-Url: http://winboard.nl/cgi-bin?p=xboard.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=111cb5deba58e6ca98ca540bd1ccfcb6cce6a177 Creat news page for4.9.0 --- diff --git a/whats_new/4.8.0/index.html b/whats_new/4.8.0/index.html index 8380623..e0ee4a6 100644 --- a/whats_new/4.8.0/index.html +++ b/whats_new/4.8.0/index.html @@ -60,7 +60,7 @@

- Follow-up + Follow-up (4.9.0)

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What is new in XBoard/WinBoard 4.9.0?

+
+ +

New features in this release

 + + +		 + +

New variant support

 + + +		 + + +

+ Follow-up +

+

+ Preceding release (4.8.0) +

+

+ Experimental and future stuff +

+
+ +

The following features are new in XBoard 4.9.0:

 + + +

EPD test suites

+

+A new volatile option -epd will switch XBoard in EPD mode for the duration of the session. +In this mode all games will be terminated after a single move. +This move will then be compared with the best-move (bm) or avoid-move (am) fields +from the EPD position specification from which the game started, +and counters will be kept of the number of good and wrong solutions thus given by the engine. +XBoard can thus be used to run an EPD test suite, through a command like +"xboard -epd -mg 100 -lpf STS1.epd -lpi -1 -fcp crafty" +to solve the first 100 test positions on the STS1.epd file with the Crafty engine +at the default time control. +The results of the test suite will be reported in the second pane of the Engine Output window, +and as the 'match' result in the title bar: +finding a correct best move will be counted as a win, playing an avoid move as a loss, +and all other moves as draws. +

+ +

Selecting a piece with the mouse wheel

+

+In Edit Position mode, operating the mouse wheel above a square now creates a piece in that square, +or changes the identity of that piece, making it run through the entire set of pieces participating in the current variant. +This is especially useful in variants with many piece types, +where sweep selection becomes problematic due to lack of space to move the mouse. +

+ +

What if your mouse only has a single button?

+

+Setting up a position required the right mouse button ('button 3' in Linux) to put new pieces on the board. +The option -monoMouse can allow XBoard to use the left button for this. +In that case clicking over an empty square will behave like it was a right-click, +and will create a piece in that square. +Clicking over an occupied square will select or grab the piece, +as usual for left-clocks. +

+ +

Your favorite starting positions

+

+A new option -positionDir can force the file-selector dialog that pops up in response to Load Position +to start browsing in the specified directory, rather than in the current directory. +This can be useful whan you have a fvorite set of positions from which you often start games, +e.g. for several material-odds positions. +

+ + +

Clicking menus and dialog texts for instant help

+

+All text labels in dialogs and the main pop-down menu items can now be right-clicked, +in order to pop up a text box with the description of their function from the manual. +The man page has been largely rewritten and re-organized to make sure most +items produce satisfactory help this way. +

+ +

Fractions in the time-control parameters

+

+The spin controls in the Time Control dialog of XBoard's GTK build do not allow entering non-integer values, +which precluded setting base times like 0:30 (for 30 sec) or increments like 0.1 (sec). +To work around that there now is a divide-by-60 checkbox in that dialog, +which allows you to enter base times in seconds and increments in units of 1/60 seconds. +

+ +

Engine Settings on the engine's demand

+

+It was already possible for an engine to cause pop up of a message, or a simple question. +Now engines can modify their settings dialog after startup, and force it to pop up. +This is triggered by the 'feature done=N' command, where a meaning has been given to new values of N. +XBoard will now erase the engine's option list on receiving done=0, +so that the engine can redefine the settings, or even the options itself, by resending 'feature option' commands. +Ending such a resent option list with "feature done=1" will now cause the contents of an open settings dialog to be updated. +Ending it with done=2 will alert XBoard that the list of options itself changed, +and force it to close and re-open a dialog that was already open. +Ending with done=3 will even open a redesigned dialog when no dialog was up before, +allowing the engine to ask for attention. +

+ + +

Getting rid of the xterm window in ICS play

+

+The console from which XBoard was started was historically used as text window to interact with the Internet Chess Server. +But the ICS Chat/Console window now fulfills the same function. +So not being able to read from or write to the terminal is no longer a fatal error, +and XBoard can be started in ICS mode without terminal, provided the ICS Chat/Console window is open. +This window now also hides the password you are typing, +and prevents you from recalling it with the arrow keys. +

+ +

Auto-install of board themes

+

+A new option -installTheme has been added, which can be put into XBoard's master settings file +when installing a package with new piece images and/or board textures, +to make a selection item for this board theme automatically appear in XBoard's themes listbox. +This opens the possibility for easy packaging and distribution of board themes. +

+ +

Making a sound during analysis

+

+The move sound can now also be played when a new PV arrives in Analyze mode +(where normal moving does not take place). +A new option -analysisBell DELAY can specify a DELAY in seconds, +and any line of engine thinking output that arrives after this delay +will cause the move sound to be played. +Setting the value to zero will disable move sounds during analysis. +

+ + + +

New variant support

 + +
+ +

22 New piece types

+

+The number of piece types in XBoard has been expanded from 44 to 66. +The order of the pieces beyond the first 22 in the -pieceToCharTable option, +which was never officially defined, (as those pieces were only used in Chu Shogi), is now established as well. +This ordering is depicted in the image. +XBoard distinguishes primary and secondary pieces (the latter indicated on purple background). +To make pieceToCharTables compatible with future expansion of the number of primary pieces, +a slash '/' in this table indicates that the pieces following it are from the secondary series +(except for King, which is always the last piece of each color). +These secondary pieces are assumed to be less generally useful, +satisfying very specific needs of some Shogi variants, +and would thus hardly be needed. +

+All pieces have a default image in XBoard, scalable to all square sizes. +WinBoard, however, does not have built-in bitmaps for most unorthodox pieces +for square sizes other than 33x33 ('petite'), 49x49 ('middling') and 72x72 ('bulky'), +and no bitmaps for the pieces on green or purple background in any size. +WinBoard can load images for all pieces from external bitmap files, however. +The name of these files in the pieceImageDirectory should be +pieceNN_SSo.bmp, pieceNN_SSs.bmp, and pieceNN_SSw.bmp, +(for the outline, solid and background image), +with SS the square size (e.g. 49), +and NN the number of the pieces in the pieceToCharTable ordering (0-65). +Pieces shown in black in XBoard are duplicats of other pieces in the default piece theme, +but in principle have different names for their image files, +so that in other themes they could be different. +(This is useful in Shogi, where the same piece sometimes has a different name written on it.) +

+Note that the Lance and Lion image occur on two different pieces; +This because the pieces originally using these images have special properties in XBoard. +The Lance is considered an alternative Pawn, and thus is assumed to promote +(with full promotion choice) +when reaching last rank. +The Lion is subject to rules that restrict its trading. +The duplicats are added so that these pictograms can also be used for pieces not having this property. +

+
+ +

Beating the alphabet

+ +

+Some Shogi variants have (far) more than 26 piece types. +This makes it impossible to assign a single letter as ID for the piece, +for the purpose of writing its moves as SAN, or its occurrence in FEN. +In XBoard this problem has now been solved by allowing pieces to be represented by 'dressed letters', +a letter followed by a punctuation mark like an exclamation point or quote. +So if L represents one piece, L' represents another, and L! yet another. +In the future this could be extended with still other symbols (like L"), +but at the moment having 3x26 = 78 possible IDs, +still stretched more by the +L notation for promoted pieces, +seems more than enough. +

+ +

Promoting pieces, but to what?

+

+XBoard already supported Shogi-style promotion of pieces, +where each piece promotes to a fixed 'partner'. +The assignment of a promotion partner was fixed, however: +each piece in the first 11 of the pieceToCharTable could promote to the piece 11 places further. +This was enabled by defining the ID for the latter as '+'. +For reasons of backward compatibility, this is still how things work by default. +

+But in XBoard 4.9 a piece can be indicated by multiple characters in the pieceToCharTable, +and the combination ^L defines a piece not only as a promoted type (like '+' would), +but also specifies it is the promoted partner of the piece with ID 'L', +which could be any other piece in the pieceToCharTable. +So any piece can potentially promote to any other, +redefining the fixed pairing between pieces in the first and second group of 11. +

+Another novelty is that pieces can also be defined with an ID *L. +This has the same effect as defining it as the (unpromoted) 'L', +but in addition defines the 10th piece of the secondary series as its promoted form. +This allows many pieces to have the same promoted form, +(as commonly occurs in large Shogi variants), +without the need to have multiple representations for that promoted version. +

+ +

Promotion choice, but with restrictions

+

+XBoard assumes by default that Pawns can promote to any piece participating in the variant +that is not a Pawn or King. +This then is the choice the user is offered through detour or sweep promotions. +It is left to the engine to refuse moves that would choose a non-allowed piece, +and often the default choice (the piece obtained when not dragging the Pawn through a detour, +or making a static click on the to-square) +would not be the strongest piece at all. +

+XBoard 4.9 supports a new extension of the engine communication protocol, +where an engine can send a 'choice' command +in response to a 'put' or 'lift' command sent to it because the user +performed a promoting move (to last rank, or to a square highlighted in magenta). +This 'choice' command conveys a list of piece IDs of possible promotion choices, +to which XBoard then will limit the choice offered to the user. +The first mentioned piece in this list will then be the default choice. +

+ + +

UTF8 text inscriptions on pieces

+

+XBoard 4.9 has a new volatile option -inscriptions, which can define an UTF8 text string. +The characters in this string correspond to pieces according to the same rules as the -pieceTCharTable option. +Thus defined characters will then be written on top of the corresponding piece image. +In addition there is a new 'fall-back' rule for missing piece images in a user-defined -pieceImageDirectory: +XBoard will first try to find an image called White/BlackTile.svg before using the piece image from the default theme. +

+Together, this can be used for on-the-fly reation of Shogi themes. +One just provides an image of a blank tile of average size as the Tile.svg image, +and no image for all pieces that are intended to use this. +(For pieces like Pawn and King that need different tile size, you an still include dediated images.) +The -insrciptions argument then indicates what kanji should be written on which piece. +The kanji are written in red when the piece was defined as a promoted one, +and rendered upside-down for the side playing downward when pieces are flipped Shogi style. +

+ +

New move-generator capabilities

+

+XBoard 4.9 is capable to handle moves with two 'locust captures', +i.e. where two pieces disappear on squares other than to which the moving piece goes. +It also adopts the convention that locust capture of an own piece on the rank where the King starts +will be considered a castling of the capturing piece ('King analog') with the victim ('Rook analog'), +the latter ending up next to, but on the other side of the former. +This allows the definition of castling (through a betza 'O' atom) on non-royal pieces, +such as the 'guarding' of (extended) Omega Chess. +For castlings where the King moves one step this method is also used, +to resolve the ambiguity with normal King moves. +Castlings defined through an 'O' atom are not necessarily with the piece furthest away from the King (or other castling piece), +but one or more 'j' prefixes on the 'O' can indicate how many squares away from the edge the castling partner is located. +

+Another novelty is the use of an 'ii' prefix to Pawn moves, +indicating a move that can only be made when the Pawn is on the rank just in front of the one where it starts on. +This can be used for the often encountered rule on 10-rank boards that Pawns can be pushed 1, 2 or 3 squares from 2nd rank, +but still 1 or 2 squares from 3rd rank, as in Wildebeest Chess. +The 'i' modifier has also been given a meaning for its appearence in continuation legs +(where its meaning as move for virgin pieces only makes no sense): +it can be used on sliding continuation legs to indicate the move has to be equally long (in basic steps) +as the preceding sliding leg ('i' standing for 'iso'). +This allows for instance definition of slider rifle captures. +

+ + +

Non-rectangular boards, or boards with holes

+

+XBoard 4.9 supports inaccessible squares, displayed in black. +These can be used as fillers to fit non-rectangular boards in the display of XBoard. +E.g. the Omega-Chess board with the dangling Wizard squares can be realized +by defining a 12x12 board, and making all edge squares except the corners inaccessible. +In FENs these inaccessible squares are indicated by asterisks '*'. +

+

+In Edit Position mode you can create inaccessible squares by dragging empty squares off board, +but you can also fill them again by moving pieces or empty squares to them. +Clearing the board leaves the inaccessible squares as they are. +

+ +

Command-line options to redefine game rules

+

+A new option -fen can define an alternative starting position +(from which the board size will be deduced). +This could already been done by specifying a position file through -lpf, +but the -fen option can do it directly from the command line, without the need for a separate file. +

+

+A new option -men can redefine moves of the pieces, +like the VariantMen tag does in a PGN file. +Its value can be a semicolon-separated list of piece ID : Betza move description pairs, +like Q:KGH;B:mBcaibB. +Both the -men and -fen options are volatile, +and apply only as long as the New Variant dialog is not used to select a variant. +

+ +

Foreign game formats

+

+XBoard's game parser should now understand traditional Shogi notation, as in .kif files. +It would understand those both in UTF8 and Shift-JIS encoding. +This allows you to directly paste Shogi games into XBoard. +XBoard will always save games in PGN format, though. +

+ +

Fixed bugs

+ + + + + + + + + +