computerchess on apple

[Roger Brown]

In any event, your account will not be removed. You may find that you change your mind eventually.

Later.

Then who do I have to request to get it removed? I can't find the terms and conditions either. Nor in the FAQ.

Dear Richard,

The Administrator of this board is Sam Hull.

He would have the requisite authority...

You are determined to go?

As I explained previously, you were not being insulted.

Later.

[mclane]

to be honest, i have so far the opinion that the apple computer is a big shit.

i always thought microsoft computers are a big shit and anti intuitiv, but the apple is way more stupid.

nothing works after downloading and installing as it should.
i was capable to install stockfish and komodo in chess-.x but there
they compute only 10 seconds in analysis.

10 seconds ??? whats the idea behind that ?

in xboard and in scid or whatever the installation of ucis is a pain in the ass.
you have to type strange commands into a terminal program to see files.
what the fuck is this ???


my prejudices about apple users sleeping in front of the apple stores waiting for a new iphone seem to be proven.

even on my mobile android phone i can much easier install chess engines and use them in the way i want.

i thought apple is easy, intuitive and much better thn windows.
but it seems this is just a marketing lie.

why is windows pcs so easy handling chess and why is apple so complicate ??

i download the engines , copy them onto the hdd into my chess diretctory, install the chess program and want to ply with it.
not reading internet how to operate the apple machine.

[hgm]

in xboard and in scid or whatever the installation of ucis is a pain in the ass.

How so? Is ticking a checkbox 'UCI' really painful for you?

[mclane]

in xboard and in scid or whatever the installation of ucis is a pain in the ass.

How so? Is ticking a checkbox 'UCI' really painful for you?

I have now Running a match between Komodo and stockfish on the Mac mini.
I wonder where to setup the threads used by the chess program. Ok I found that.

There is one menue called engine match. How can I configure it?
E.g. Telling the gui to run 100 games from pgn position xyz and exchange colors after each opening.

How about tables bases on the Mac ?

Is there a button I can adjudicate the running game when I see it will end in a draw or a position is hopeless ?


I see no check boxes on my screen in front of the menus. There is a gap before the switches but no squares to check.
Can I copy my 31 gb tables bases from the PC HDD onto the Mac hdd and tell board in the common engine settings menue and it works ?

[hgm]

I wonder where to setup the threads used by the chess program.
In the engine setup I saw no threads or cores.

In the Common Engine Options dialog you can specify 'Max nr of CPUs'.

There is one menue called engine match. How can I configure it?
E.g. Telling the gui to run 100 games from pgn position xyz and exchange colors after each opening.

You configure the tournament through the Match Options dialog (in the Options menu); the Machine Match menu item is just for starting / pausing / stopping the currently configured tourney or match. (This allows you to quickly start a 'shootout' between the currently loaded engines with your default match settings.)



Behind 'Default Number of Games in Match' you type 100 .
Behind 'Game File with opening lines' you type the name of the file with opening lines (or use the Browse button right of it to point it out).
Behind 'Game Number (-1 or -2 = Auto-Inrement)' you type -1, because you want the number of the game used as opening line to increment after each game.
Changing colors every game is automatic in a two-player match.

You can specify a Tournament File, select two engines and press 'OK' to start the match as a tourney that you can interrupt, and resume later (by clicking the tourney file, which records tourney settings and progress). Or when the engines were already loaded, you can just 'OK' without selecting engines and specifying a tourney file, and use the menu Mode->Machine Match to start the match. (You can also use that menu item to stop the match early, after the current game.)

How about tables bases on the Mac ?

There is a Nalimov Path text entry in the Common Engine Options dialog, where you can enter the path to the tablebases to be communicated to the engine. I must admit I forgot whether you can also use it for the other flavors of tablebases in XBoard; in WinBoard you can, by typing the flavor name before the path, like "syzygy:/usr/share/games/chess/tablebases". I would have t check if that works in XBoard. If not, you can always run XBoard once from the command line with the option -egtFormats syzygy:PATHNAME

Is there a button I can adjudicate the running game when I see it will end in a draw or a position is hopeless ?

Well, it is a menu item, rather than a button. Look in the Action menu, for 'Adjudicate to White', etc. You can of course also let the GUI adjudicate automatically, if the score gets too high, by setting a WIn/Loss Threshold in the Adjudication Options dialog.

[mclane]

Thanks for the answer. I have a problem that I cannot see any check boxes in front of the switches. There is a space e.g. In front of UCI but no check box.

I cannot see anything even after clicking on a parameter switch.
Any idea ? All those switches make not much sense if you do not see which options have been chosen and which not.

[hgm]

You are using the XBoard OSX App made by Joshua? This does sound like you have a defective version of some library; it is not normal that checkboxes are not drawn.

[JoshPettus]

That does sound like a faulty GTK theme... You have 10.6 correct?

I've been playing a lot with the GTK theme lately, never noticed that issue in the past, but maybe it is fixed now..

I'm having difficulty compiling for 10.6 at the moment. I'll have to reinstall macports, and try again. I'll let you know when I have a new build up.

In the mean time, try opening up the bundle by rightclicking on it and selecting "open package contents' go to Contents/Resources/share/themes and remove the OSX-theme folder. This will force gtk to use the default theme.

That may work for you. (I'm starting to think that macports didn't compile everything for 10.6)

[mclane]

That does sound like a faulty GTK theme... You have 10.6 correct?

I've been playing a lot with the GTK theme lately, never noticed that issue in the past, but maybe it is fixed now..

I'm having difficulty compiling for 10.6 at the moment. I'll have to reinstall macports, and try again. I'll let you know when I have a new build up.

In the mean time, try opening up the bundle by rightclicking on it and selecting "open package contents' go to Contents/Resources/share/themes and remove the OSX-theme folder. This will force gtk to use the default theme.

That may work for you. (I'm starting to think that macports didn't compile everything for 10.6)

No I have 10.7.5

[JoshPettus]

Oh good! I can't compile Pango anymore for 10.6. So you're in luck! I'll get right back to you with a build.