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WinBoard Portable 4.2.7 Pre-release 3 (Testers needed)

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Ryan McCue
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WinBoard Portable 4.2.7 Pre-release 3 (Testers needed)

Here's basically the same one as PR2, but with a PA splash screen, thanks to John.
Please test it, as this will most likely be the last pre-release before I send it off to John. And now, for our feature presentation...

WinBoard Portable is the popular WinBoard chess game packaged in a portable format. WinBoard is a graphical frontend for the GNU Chess and XBoard chess engines and can load and save PGN formatted games. Plus, it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, so you can take your chess games wherever you go.

WinBoard Portable 4.2.7 Pre-release 3

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Ryan McCue

Patrick Patience
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Wow.

Gees, Blum

;=== Move the settings file if WinBoard's being stupid

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It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...

Ryan McCue
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Well,

I fixed it so it wouldn't do it, but it still did it under certain conditions. Stupid thing. Blum
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Ryan McCue.
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So all that Airbus-delay trouble over here in Europe is because of YOU!
Simeon.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

Simeon
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Cool

Leaves nothing.
“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.” - Richard P. Feynman

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

Ediseye
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Works Good

Just downloaded and it works like a charm.

Kevin Porter
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Perfect (well, as perfect as

Perfect (well, as perfect as Ryan can get). Blum

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Francis Cardinal Spell

-Please search before posting.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

raftscomagent
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no problems as far as i can tell

Seems to work well "out of the box" (which, i might add, has been my experience with all the portable apps). the gnuchess backend still beats me all the time, so no problem with that aspect of it either. I want to thank you all for the work you've done, particularly with port-abling (neologism?) winboard. i'm excited to be able to lose at chess on every windows computer i have access to.

thanks again.

raftscomagent
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target release date?

any ideas as to when a non-beta winboard will be available?

Patrick Patience
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Unfortunately...

No. Maybe Ryan has some idea, but I'd say no. But really, I think this one will be the official release anyway.
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Wow, I just noticed I still had a signature, that's enough of that.

Ryan McCue
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Should be

This should be the final PR. Hopefully it'll come out next week when we do the major releases. Gonna be hell having to read all the forum posts Blum
----
Ryan McCue.
Blog.
So all that Airbus-delay trouble over here in Europe is because of YOU!
Simeon.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

Simeon
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Helll???

Been gone for some time???
I'll be gone for 2 weeks... Wink
looking forward to reading all the posts...:lol:

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.” - Richard P. Feynman

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

Ryan McCue
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I meant

All the new releases will make an influx of posts and we'll be overwhelmed Wink
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Ryan McCue.
Blog.
So all that Airbus-delay trouble over here in Europe is because of YOU!
Simeon.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

Simeon
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Ohh

But "new release-posts" are a pleasure to read.
Others sometimes arent...;)
“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.” - Richard P. Feynman

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

Ryan McCue
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Hehe.

I suppose. But I can almost guarantee that there'll be 4 pages or more on the tracker Shock
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Ryan McCue.
Blog.
So all that Airbus-delay trouble over here in Europe is because of YOU!
Simeon.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

OliverK
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NEXT WEEK! YEAH! *Cheers,

NEXT WEEK! YEAH! *Cheers, blah, blah, blah*

Sweet. As for all the forum posts, i'm sure the regulars will be willing to help!

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

Ryan McCue
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Yeh, well

It's John's problem, not mine Blum

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

JeffCarr
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Looks good, except one little bug...

I'd like to use a different engine (the Spike engine), and am having difficulty with it, part of the problem appears to be a bug in WinBoard Portable.

I placed the Spike files in the winboard folder, and changed the reference to

/firstChessProgramNames={Spike
"Spike1.2 xboard"
}
/secondChessProgramNames={GNUChess
"GNUChes5 xboard"
}

The problem is that it doesn't find the Spike1.2.exe file. Even when the filename is listed as Spike1.2.exe it doesn't work. Renaming Spike1.2.exe to Spike.exe and changing the reference to "Spike xboard" does work... to a point.

I still can't get Spike to work, as it complains, "Failed to start first chess program Spike on localhost: Endgame tables : not found" But this is likely to be a Spike issue.

Ryan McCue
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Well...

Does it work with a local install of Winboard? I'm almost 100% sure it's a problem with WinBoard itself. The "Spike1.2" may be telling it to open "Spike1.2" as it may assume "2" is a file extension.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

ares246
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Perfect

I tested the portable version of WinBoard, it works!
Many thanks for it. Smile

mcwa
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B E A utiful

Tried all moves/castle king/queen/ pessant like it very much
thnks

"If imagination doesn't have barriers why do we limit our imagination?"

Liberskull
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sorry again

I have made my version of winboardportable before registering on the forum. I have searched "Apps Hosted Here" for winboard, and did not searched forum, so I thought that there is no wbportable. So, I made mistake creating new topic. Sorry for that.

To add new engine, winboard.ini should be altered simmilar to this:
In the place where are menu options [end of the file]

/firstChessProgramNames={choose...
-cp -fd Engines\Crafty\ -fcp "crafty xboard"
-cp -fd Engines\GNUChess5\ -fcp "gnuchess507 xboard"
-cp -fd Engines\Scidlet\ -fcp "Scidlet xboard"
-cp -fd Engines\PhalanxXXII\ -fcp Phalanx
}
/secondChessProgramNames={choose...
-cp -sd Engines\Crafty\ -scp "crafty xboard"
-cp -sd Engines\GNUChess5\ -scp "gnuchess507 xboard"
-cp -sd Engines\Scidlet\ -scp "Scidlet xboard"
-cp -sd Engines\PhalanxXXII\ -scp Phalanx
}
/showButtonBar=true

Some engines does not support xboard command [like the phalanx in the example above]. You can check it by double clicking the engine file [*.exe] and type help, or from the command prompt engine.exe /?, or -help or something like that. If there is xboard command in the list, than use "engine xboard", if not than don't. [this is only for winboard engines, uci protocol is different]

The meaning of winboard switches are in the winboard.hlp.

I personally use the following folder hierarchy:
Directory of H:\PortableApps\WinBoard

28.11.2003 10:51 AM 1,996,284 winboard.exe
19.11.2003 05:37 AM 140,586 winboard.hlp
10.12.2007 02:44 PM 7,651 winboard.ini
10.12.2007 01:24 AM Docs
10.12.2007 01:24 AM Engines
10.12.2007 01:24 AM icscon
10.12.2007 01:24 AM Pgn
09.06.1998 08:30 PM 782 bughouse.bat

Directory of H:\PortableApps\WinBoard\Engines

10.12.2007 01:24 AM Scidlet
10.12.2007 01:24 AM PhalanxXXII
10.12.2007 01:24 AM GNUChess5
10.12.2007 01:24 AM Crafty
0 File(s) 0 bytes

Directory of H:\PortableApps\WinBoard\icscon

10.06.1998 12:22 PM 48,640 timeseal.exe
09.12.2001 11:27 PM 52,736 timestamp.exe
2 File(s) 101,376 bytes
...since the timeseal.exe and timestamp.exe are used for connecting on internet chess servers, and since I changed the location of the files, wb ini file should be altered too.

/icsNames={chessclub.com /icsport=5000 /icshelper=icscon\timestamp
freechess.org /icsport=5000 /icshelper=icscon\timeseal
global.chessparlor.com /icsport=6000 /icshelper=icscon\timeseal
chessanytime.com /icsport=5000
chess.net /icsport=5000
zics.org /icsport=5000
jogo.cex.org.br /icsport=5000
ajedrez.cec.uchile.cl /icsport=5000
fly.cc.fer.hr /icsport=7890
freechess.nl /icsport=5000 /icshelper=icscon\timeseal
jeu.echecs.com /icsport=5000
chess.unix-ag.uni-kl.de /icsport=5000 /icshelper=icscon\timeseal
chess.mds.mdh.se /icsport=5000

It is easier, for me at least.

Regards,
Liberskull

horusofoz
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Hey guys, Been looking for a

Hey guys,

Been looking for a chess game for a while and didn't realise this one had been here so long it had been classified as outdated. Maybe an official release or whatever would help others to fins it to.

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Ryan McCue
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Yep.

It's using an outdated launcher, not up to the current standard. I'll update it one of these days...

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

horusofoz
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Cheers.

Cheers.

Must say it would be a good addition to the apps page as the games section is a little sparse Sad

Can I ask an stupid question? How hard is it to portablise these apps and for outdated apps like this one how hard is it to update or is it more just time consuming?

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kai.inouye
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Shouldn't

Shouldn't Other\WinBoardPortableSource be Other\Source and there be a help.html and more than one format on appicon.ico?

OliverK
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This is a old post-so, it

This is a old post-so, it doesn't exactly have to follow the guidelines. It followed what was supposed at the time, as John T Haller took along time to write them.

Ryan may or may not update it.

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

Kevin Porter
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Updates?

Ryan, do you plan on updating WinBoard anytime soon? If not, then would you mind my taking up of the project?

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

kai.inouye
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heres a icon I made
horusofoz
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Hi Ryan Are you going to

Hi Ryan

Are you going to update this or can you give permission for Kevin Porter to pick it up.

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horusofoz
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=(

Ryan?

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gudmund
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What happened to this?

It seemed to be ready to go. Since I didn't see any chess game in the released games section, I assumed nobody had thought of it, went out and found DreamChess, which I'm now experimenting with.

Notable advantage vs. WinBoard, apart from the eyecandy: you easily find difficulty settings.

WinBoard is more lightweight, with 3.7 vs. 6.4 MB.

Not an advanced or experienced player, and have hardly played around with these apps, so I can't say how good either of them is.

Gudmund

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