WinBoard 4.5.1

[hgm]

There is a new tar ball (master-20110217) available at the Savannah website, which is intended to become the XBoard 4.5.1 release. This should correct most of the packaging and MSVC compatibility problems in the 4.5.0 package, and in addition corrects a few minor bugs that surfaced in the mean time.

Could someone with a 64-bit Linux system try to see if it compiles without problems, and in particular if the File-Browser dialog operates as it should? (By opening some PGN or EPD files) This dialog is taken from GhostView, and seems to produce some cryptic warnin about int-pointer conversion. Note that scroll controls from the X-toolkit must be manipulated with the middle mouse button, while left and right clicking moves the thumb up or down by a fixed amount.

Tests of 64-bit and/or MSVC WinBoard compiles are also welcome. If no major problems are detected, we will release 4.5.1 this weekend.

[UncombedCoconut]

Hello, on my Linux/x86_64 system the file-picker was ugly but fully functional. (It still makes me wish I was familiar enough with GTK to help that branch.)

[hgm]

OK, thanks.

[Peter Skinner]

I noticed in this release there is a "master" winboard.ini and a user one. Why was this done?

Also, under Winboard 4.5.0, the right click seems broken. You have to hold it down like you would under Linux to select an item. Was this done intentionally?

I reverted back to 4.4.4 due to the issue.

Peter

[hgm]

I noticed in this release there is a "master" winboard.ini and a user one. Why was this done?

There were complaints by administrators of multi-user systems that users would need administrator privileges to save their settings. Indeed on modern Windows versions, which require user login, it is not upto standards to have all users share the same settings file. So the saving of settings is diverted to go to a user-dependent location.

This is similar to which XBoard now does it; there the master settings fileis in /etc/xboard.conf,where a normal user has no write permission, and it diverts the saving to ~/.xboardrc .

This is a matter of configuring; if you don't like it, you can just delete winboard.ini from the WinBoard folder, or delete the /settingsFile and /saveSettingsFile options from it (which would cause the master file being overwritten by the actual settings first time you save those). If the purpose is just to have the settings file in the WinBoard folder, (e.g. for easier access), it would be better to keep the master/user concept, and redefine the /settingsFile arguments in the master to (say) settings.ini. Then you can still use the master to redefine default values for volatile options, or redefine persistent options as volatile, which would not be possible in a configuration with a single settings file.

Also, under Winboard 4.5.0, the right click seems broken. You have to hold it down like you would under Linux to select an item. Was this done intentionally?

This was intentional, because people requested the possibility to select a default action from the context menu with a single click. So the context menu is designed to popup with the default item under the mouse pointer. (Like the piece menu in XBoard Edit Position mode pops up with "Pawn" under the mouse pointer, so you can quickly place Pawns.)

If you want the old behavior you can define an inactive item in the default location (menu text " ", command "null", which has been defined as special for the purpose). The up-click will then not select anything, and the menu will stay up until you make a second click on an item.