How to force WinBoard to send egtpath command

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

Moderator: Ras

Sven
Posts: 4052
Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 9:57 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Full name: Sven Schüle

How to force WinBoard to send egtpath command

Post by Sven »

I use WinBoard 4.4.2b and have implemented Gaviota tablebase access in my new engine which is a native WinBoard engine. The EGTB path is correctly set in the GUI dialog (D:\gtb), and the engine sends

Code: Select all

feature egt="gaviota"
at startup (including the quotes since otherwise WB rejects that feature command). According to the WB spec the GUI should now send

Code: Select all

egtpath gaviota D:\gtb
prior to each "new" command, but actually here it doesn't, now matter how often I repeat to start a new game.

Extract from winboard.debug:

Code: Select all

578 <first : feature egt="gaviota"
578 >first : accepted egt
578 <first : feature done=1
578 >first : accepted done
594 >first : new
random
594 >first : level 40 120 0
594 >first : post
594 >first : hard
594 >first : easy
594 >first : ping 1
594 <first : pong 1
Any clue why? What am I missing? It is probably trivial ...

Sven
User avatar
michiguel
Posts: 6401
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:30 pm
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA

Re: How to force WinBoard to send egtpath command

Post by michiguel »

Sven Schüle wrote:I use WinBoard 4.4.2b and have implemented Gaviota tablebase access in my new engine which is a native WinBoard engine. The EGTB path is correctly set in the GUI dialog (D:\gtb), and the engine sends

Code: Select all

feature egt="gaviota"
at startup (including the quotes since otherwise WB rejects that feature command). According to the WB spec the GUI should now send

Code: Select all

egtpath gaviota D:\gtb
prior to each "new" command, but actually here it doesn't, now matter how often I repeat to start a new game.

Extract from winboard.debug:

Code: Select all

578 <first : feature egt="gaviota"
578 >first : accepted egt
578 <first : feature done=1
578 >first : accepted done
594 >first : new
random
594 >first : level 40 120 0
594 >first : post
594 >first : hard
594 >first : easy
594 >first : ping 1
594 <first : pong 1
Any clue why? What am I missing? It is probably trivial ...

Sven
if I send
feature egt="gaviota"

I telll xboard what the path is with the following command line switch:

-egtFormats "gaviota:/media/MIGUEL2/gtb4/"

and I receive

egtpath gaviota /media/MIGUEL2/gtb4/

Maybe if you include that command line switch in winboard it should do the trick. You are telling winboard the path to EGTBs, which WB thinks is Nalimov.

Miguel
User avatar
hgm
Posts: 28387
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:06 am
Location: Amsterdam
Full name: H G Muller

Re: How to force WinBoard to send egtpath command

Post by hgm »

The GUI dialog only sets the Nalimov Path, as in Winboard_x it used to correspond to the (now deprecated) command-line option /defaultPathEGTB. I guess what is needed is some extra fields in the dialog that allow one to set path names & types for several types. At the moment the path can be set only through the /egtFormats option. But as this setting is stored in the winboard.ini file, you won have to do that too often, fortunately.
Sven
Posts: 4052
Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 9:57 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Full name: Sven Schüle

Re: How to force WinBoard to send egtpath command

Post by Sven »

Many thanks for your quick replies, now it works for me with the /egtFormats command line switch.

Sven