TalkChess.com

[H.G.Muller]

I have uploaded a new WB version to http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-4.6beta.zip . In this version I changed the comboboxes for specifying an engine in the Load Engine and Tournament Options dialogs by listboxes. This seemed to work more naturally to me, especially in combination with the grouping of engines. With comboboxes you had to re-open the combobox all the time; after selecting a group, it would close, and you would have to re-open it before you could see the contents of the group. Also when selecting a number of engines for a tourney, it was annoying that you would have to re-open the combobox, and move to the area where you was selecting engines after every engine.

With listboxes, the engines stay in view always (and opening a group immediately shows you its contents), and you only have to double-click them. It also makes it more natural to respect grouping when installing new engines: a new engine will now always be added at the bottom of the list that you see. (i.e. if you are within a group, it will be installed in that group.)

The listboxes could also have some disadvantages, though (like making it less easy to select a name by partially typing it). So I would like to know what people think of this change.

This version also supports the exclude-moves feature, as described in http://hgm.nubati.net/news.html . (For this reason it is bundled with a Polyglot that supports it too.)