I am working on a special WinBoard / XBoard release for the benefit of CTT 11. What I considered most annoying during previous CCTs was that the engine kibitz would flood the ICS interaction window, so that it was virtually impossible to converse with the opponent operator or follow the conversation on the tournament channel in general. Some engines really overdo it in terms of kibitzing, sending you a full kibitz line for all iterations, even during ponder!
So I have been preparing a WinBoard version that tries to keep opponent engine kibitzes out of the ICS interaction window. In stead the content of these kibitz messages is diverted to the engine-output window of WinBoard.
So where normally in ICS mode the engine-output window in zippy mode consists of a single display for the engine thinking output, when your opponent starts to kibitz in this mode with messages that contain a lot of digits (more than 10%), the display will split in two (as it is in Two-Macines mode), and the lower half will contain these kibbitz lines.
Currently the whole package of kibitz options, including the sending of your own engines kibitz, is controlled by the single -autoKibitz flag. If this is off, the old behavior will occur, and all kibitzes will appear in the ICS interaction window only. WOuld it be desirable to have separate options for letting WinBoard send your own kibitz, and for diverting the opponent kibitz to the engine-output window?
Are there other ideas / suggestions how this could be improved? E.g. during Observing I now do nothing yet. Would it be desirable to divert kibitzes of both playing engines to the engine-output window in this case? Should this be controlled by a different option?
Any feedback is welcome.
WinBoard CCT11 edition
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
Sounds like a really good idea ...
"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions."
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Ted Summers
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Ted Summers
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
I have been getting the strange bug with the winboard X version when I used it with Bright. The engine more often loses the game on time, and exits with pop up box displaying windows related error.
Other engines are all stable, they don't exhibit such an arbit bug. I switched over to Chess Partner, Bright is stable there. Therefore, that should be a winboard's bug?
Other engines are all stable, they don't exhibit such an arbit bug. I switched over to Chess Partner, Bright is stable there. Therefore, that should be a winboard's bug?
Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
I suspect a debug log of a game where that happens would be of help.
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
This is the error.krazyken wrote:I suspect a debug log of a game where that happens would be of help.

Followed by a pop up message box that reads "Program exited unexpectedly"
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
If other engines don't have it, but Bright does, it is likely to be a Bright bug.
Apparently Bright crashes through an illegal memory reference, which is always a fault of the engine, as WB protocol does not specify a command 'crash'. So by definition no GUI could possibly do something that makes the engine crash.
If there is a difference in behaviour between GUIs, it might be because one of the GUIs sends a normal command for something else that the other doesn't, and that Bright's handling of this command is buggy.
If you want to know which command it is, you should really print the winboard.debug file (and send it to Allard).

Apparently Bright crashes through an illegal memory reference, which is always a fault of the engine, as WB protocol does not specify a command 'crash'. So by definition no GUI could possibly do something that makes the engine crash.
If there is a difference in behaviour between GUIs, it might be because one of the GUIs sends a normal command for something else that the other doesn't, and that Bright's handling of this command is buggy.
If you want to know which command it is, you should really print the winboard.debug file (and send it to Allard).
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
Thanks for the explanation but how should I do this?hgm wrote: If you want to know which command it is, you should really print the winboard.debug file (and send it to Allard).
I'm obviously a newbie here. And I haven't used winboard often. I like using winboard rather than Chesspartner, so It would be of great help If I managed to use winboard in the upcoming CCT.
And I appreciate your work on Winboard, You have made a big progress I hear.
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
Either type ctl-alt-F12 immediately after starting winboard with the engine, or start it with the option /debug on the command line. WinBoard will then write all communication with the engine on a file winboard.debug in the WinBoard folder.
Play Bright until it crashes, and after WinBoard exits, post the last 100 lines or so of the winboard.debug file here (better in another thread, as it is a bit off-topic here). And/or e-mail the entire winboard.debug to Allard.
Play Bright until it crashes, and after WinBoard exits, post the last 100 lines or so of the winboard.debug file here (better in another thread, as it is a bit off-topic here). And/or e-mail the entire winboard.debug to Allard.
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Re: WinBoard CCT11 edition
Thanks for your help. I have done both.hgm wrote:Play Bright until it crashes, and after WinBoard exits, post the last 100 lines or so of the winboard.debug file here (better in another thread, as it is a bit off-topic here). And/or e-mail the entire winboard.debug to Allard.