Arena for Mac OS X? (or equivalent decent GUI)

[smcracraft]

Hi,

I am thinking I'd like to play a game of chess or two
with something other than the default Chess on
Mac OS X (GNU) and the various others, also mostly
GNU... instead, for example, Fruit, Toga II, or other
stronger programs...

But I don't have any GUI and know little about what's
available for the Mac OS X interface in the way of
general GUI's for UCI programs like Fruit, Toga II,
Rybka, and others...

If anyone knows and can pass it on in reply, thanks.
(where to get the GUI and the binary... I have the
default Mac OS X GNU GCC and related libraries
and can compile anything necessary if a binary
isn't available.)

Thanks,

Stuart

[hgm]

WinBoard?

[Tord Romstad]

WinBoard?

WinBoard doesn't work in Mac OS X, except possibly with the help of some sort of Windows emulator, in which case you could just as well use Arena. XBoard works, sort of, but requires X11 (which very few Mac OS X users are likely to have installed), and is extremely awkward and uncomfortable to use.

For UCI compatible chess programs, the two options I know are Sigma Chess (commercial, but there's a free demo version) and Glaurung (free). Both of these should be able to handle all available Mac OS X UCI engines. As far as I know, there is still no GUI with support for the XBoard protocol.

Tord

[hgm]

OK, I meant xboard. I brought it up because I already know of some people that were able to compile the latest xboard release for Mac.

Why is xboard uncomfortable to use? It is supposed to work the same as WinBoard on Windows, and for me that runs extremely suave. Is it that none of the tournament managers are portable to Mac OS?

[sje]

I've been using xboard under X Windows on the Mac for several years without major problems. There are no difficulties building and installing xboard with the free SDK provided with the operating system.

[Tord Romstad]

Why is xboard uncomfortable to use? It is supposed to work the same as WinBoard on Windows, and for me that runs extremely suave.

The problem is simply that it is not a native Mac OS X application. Winboard uses native Windows GUI functions (or so I've been told), and therefore looks and feels like other Windows programs. XBoard under Mac OS X, on the other hand, looks and feels entirely different from native Mac OS X programs, and doesn't even run unless you install X11 (which very few Macintosh users do; I'm pretty sure most users haven't even heard about it). This is a major issue: One of the defining characteristics of Mac OS X is a very consistent user interface across all applications.

Is it that none of the tournament managers are portable to Mac OS?

To be honest, I don't even know what a "tournament manager" is...

Tord

[IanO]

Hi,

I am thinking I'd like to play a game of chess or two
with something other than the default Chess on
Mac OS X (GNU) and the various others, also mostly
GNU... instead, for example, Fruit, Toga II, or other
stronger programs...

But I don't have any GUI and know little about what's
available for the Mac OS X interface in the way of
general GUI's for UCI programs like Fruit, Toga II,
Rybka, and others...

If anyone knows and can pass it on in reply, thanks.
(where to get the GUI and the binary... I have the
default Mac OS X GNU GCC and related libraries
and can compile anything necessary if a binary
isn't available.)

Thanks,

Stuart

Sigma Chess is my favorite: http://www.sigmachess.com/

It works only with UCI engines. The Sigma Chess site maintains a list of those which have been compiled for the Mac: http://www.sigmachess.com/_chesslinks/c ... s.html#UCI

In order of strength:

* HIARCS 12.1 ($)
* Shredder ($)
* Deep Sjeng ($)
* Fruit 2.3.1
* Glaurung 2.1
* TogaII 1.2b2a
* Hamsters 0.7

Toga is rather out of date. Someone should publish a Mac 1.4 build. I believe all of these engines can also be configured for multiprocessing.

Weaker engines include the built-in Sigma Chess engine, Ruffian, Homer, Gaia, Greko, BikJump, and Roce.

Glaurung also comes with a Cocoa UI which is capable of running UCI engines, but I have not tried it. http://www.glaurungchess.com/

XBoard is also available for running classic programs such as gnuchess, sjeng, and crafty (with the bonus of being able to connect to chess servers).

Ian

P.S. The built-in Chess application has used Sjeng 11.2 since OS X 10.4.

[hgm]

To be honest, I don't even know what a "tournament manager" is...

A tournament manager is a program that repeatedly invokes the GUI to play matches beloging to a larger tournament, so that the entire tournament (e.g. a round robin or a gauntlet) completes automatically.

[Ryan Benitez]

WinBoard?

WinBoard doesn't work in Mac OS X, except possibly with the help of some sort of Windows emulator, in which case you could just as well use Arena. XBoard works, sort of, but requires X11 (which very few Mac OS X users are likely to have installed), and is extremely awkward and uncomfortable to use.

For UCI compatible chess programs, the two options I know are Sigma Chess (commercial, but there's a free demo version) and Glaurung (free). Both of these should be able to handle all available Mac OS X UCI engines. As far as I know, there is still no GUI with support for the XBoard protocol.

Tord

Every Mac with OS X 10.5 and newer comes with X11 pre installed. Mac OS makes it so easy you don't even have to enter X11 to run X11 apps. The OS already knows to run X11 when it sees that you are trying to run a X11 app. For me Xboard is the simplest and most intuitive chess interface on any platform because it is easy to use through shell scripts and has fairly low overhead.

Ryan

[Dann Corbit]

I don't think you can run a contest, but the Jose interface is a very nice Java interface which should (in theory) run anywhere.

Jose does support UCI and Winboard engines but only does analysis or engine/human games (if I recall correctly).