xboard problem

[BBauer]

After pasting a game to xboard a small window comes up saying

variant super not supported by "program"

When I click ok xboard disapears.
It is xboard 4.4.3.20100220

Any ideas?
kind regards
Bernhard

[hgm]

Indeed, having the first engine not support the variant has always been a fatal error. I guess this stems from the time that there was no New Variant menu, so that there was no way to change the variant to one the engine did support without exiting XBoard first.

Now that the New Variant menu does exist, I guess it could be handled a bit more subtle. In the ideal case, all the variants not supported by the first engine should be greyed out and when a variant not supported by the second engine is selected, Two Machines shold be greyed out.

This would be a lot of work, though.

But I could at least make it a non-fatal error, and suppress the variant command to the engine. you would then get a chance to select another variant. But if you didn't, you would get all kind of illegal-move messages...

[BBauer]

Sorry, I don't get it.
I have used the engine "stockfish" for quite some time and I never got that error. Today after updating my system "ubuntu" I saw this error for the first time. Currently I cannot use xboard and have to use arena under wine.
Xboard has been working for ages - now it's broken!
BTW I cannot see any work around-
kind regards
Bernhard

[hgm]

Stockfish does not play superchess, does it? Only normal and fischerandom. So why do you present it with a game in variant super??? XBoard is quite justified in refusing such a thing, there is nothing broken about that...

[BBauer]

"So why do you present it with a game in variant super???"

I didn't present it with a variant super!

I just invoked something like
usr/local/bin/xboard -size medium -pasteSelection true -fcp /usr/local/bin/polyglot
and then pasted a game to xboard.

So I guess something has changed in xboard.
Please don't come with the usual "user error".
kind regards
Bernhard

[hgm]

Well, the game game must obviously be a game in variant superchess. Otherwise XBoard would not try to switch to variant super...

[BBauer]

Sorry, I didn't knew that players in Linares have changed to superchess.

Here is my game-file

[Event "XXVII SuperGM"]
[Site "Linares ESP"]
[Date "2010.02.23"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Grischuk, A."]
[Black "Topalov, V."]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "E15"]
[WhiteElo "2736"]
[BlackElo "2805"]
[PlyCount "111"]
[EventDate "2010.02.13"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 b6 4. g3 Ba6 5. b3 Bb4+ 6. Bd2 Be7 7. Nc3 O-O 8. Rc1
Ba3 9. Rc2 Nc6 10. Bg5 h6 11. Bxf6 Qxf6 12. Bg2 d5 13. O-O dxc4 14. bxc4 Rad8
15. Rd2 Bb4 16. Qb3 Bxc3 17. Qxc3 Na5 18. c5 Nc4 19. Rc2 bxc5 20. Qb3 cxd4 21.
Rxc4 Rb8 22. Qc2 Bxc4 23. Qxc4 e5 24. Qxc7 Rfe8 25. Qxa7 Rb2 26. Re1 g6 27. a4
Rd8 28. Qa5 e4 29. Nd2 e3 30. fxe3 d3 31. Ne4 Qe7 32. exd3 Rxd3 33. Qa8+ Kg7
34. Qc6 f5 35. Nf2 Rdd2 36. Qc3+ Kh7 37. Rf1 Rbc2 38. Qb3 Rb2 39. Qc3 Rbc2 40.
Qb3 Rb2 41. Qc4 h5 42. Qf4 Re2 43. Bf3 Rec2 44. Nd3 Ra2 45. Nb4 Rxa4 46. Nxc2
Rxf4 47. gxf4 Kh6 48. Rb1 Qe6 49. Re1 Qa2 50. Nd4 h4 51. Be2 g5 52. fxg5+ Kxg5
53. Rf1 Kg6 54. Rxf5 Qb1+ 55. Rf1 Qe4 56. Kf2 1-0

kind regards
Bernhard

[hgm]

OK, that makes it clear what the problem is: apparently XBoard applies a heuristic to the event tag to extract the variant indication. So if you would have events called, say 'The big money giveaway' it would think that it was variant giveaway. In this case it thinks that the game is variant super because the event is called superGM

No idea why it does that; the variant tag is supposed to specify the variant, not the event tag. Perhaps this is because in ICS play the variant ends up only in the event name, which will be somethinglike "ICS suicide game". For games pasted from an external source that makes little sense, though.

I will fix it so that it only looks at the variant tag. For now the work-around is either paste it without event tag, or somehow edit out the 'super' from the event name before you paste.

[BBauer]

Thank you!
Changing the event tag works.
kind regards
Bernhard

[Charles B.]

May want to check Winboard side too. Pasting the above game into Winboard and Super is selected as the variant but no error message was given. But Winboard was just opened here with 'just view or edit game', no engine selected.