carldaman wrote:When I try to use Edit Book, a blank window opens up, with a greyed-out Edit button at the bottom. It seems there is nothing to edit, and no way that I see to actually load a book.
That the 'Edit' button is grayed out is normal: this is what WinBoard does in its Edit dialogs (Edit Comment, Edit Tags, Edit Engine List) when you already are in edit mode. The strange thing is that there is nothing to edit.
The idea is that you would edit the currently loaded GUI book. (Which can be set from Common Engine Options). When I do this with the default_book.bin in the opening position, I get to see this:
Code: Select all
46.0% 12121 e2e4
37.6% 9907 d2d4
9.2% 2414 g1f3
6.4% 1683 c2c4
0.7% 176 g2g3
0.1% 20 b2b3
0.0% 13 b1c3
0.0% 11 f2f4
The window should only be empty if you are in a position for which there are no moves in the book. You can then still edit it, by adding a move. (But this is a bit difficult if you have no example of how the format should be.) The percentages, btw, are just an aid to the eye; you don't have to alter those, and next time you get the same position in the edit dialog they will be recomputed based on your edited weights.
It would be a bit weird if the opening position was empty. Even if somehow the book was not valid, it should produce an error popup to tell you that.
As far as importing pgn files into a book, I know it's possible through the command line, but I don't find it user friendly. I suspect I'm not the only one to think this way. We're not all computer whiz kids
.
In the 4.7 beta you can create a book through the GUI. I don't believe this was possible at all in any earlier WinBoard version. People used Polyglot to do it. (But that only supports orthodox Chess, so it was no good to me.) Now it is just a matter of loading the PGN file and click the 'File -> Save games as Book' menu item.
I hope a way to view tournament tables in real time is implemented, (as well as tablebase adjudications).
I always do that by detting WinBoard's -afterGame option to my favorite PGN-to-cross-table converter, and then open the file that it produces in my internet browser, so that I can simply refresh it whenever I want to see the latest standings. I do not like to built this into WinBoard, because WB's TM is designed fo concurrent play, and there is no need to show the cross tablemultiple times. And I want to be able to see the standings not only when the tourney is running, but also of old tourneys that have already finished. Perhaps I will make a separate tool to show a PGN as cross-table, which does live update when the PGN changes.
An option to pause the tournament after the current game, as Arena does, would also be useful.
That already exists: you just click Mode->Machine Match (again) to toggle the match / tourney mode off. This then takes effect afte the current game finishes.
Sorry if it seems that I'm emphasizing the negatives. Winboard is very good overall and can be better in some areas. Many thanks for your work, HG. I hope we see (more) great things in the future.
Well, don't worry, I appreciate constructive criticism. It can only lead to further improvement.
