Is it possible to play gnuchess with a board using either knights or xboard (both of which I have installed in my Fedora-23/KDE laptop). I tried "gnuchess --xboard" but no board appeared.
On Friday 04 March 2016 13:48:48 Timothy Murphy wrote:
Is it possible to play gnuchess with a board using either knights or xboard (both of which I have installed in my Fedora-23/KDE laptop). I tried "gnuchess --xboard" but no board appeared.
dnf search gnuchess
See also gnome-chess and knights and xboard. I use Knights. You can choose which chess engine you want to use.
Richard Ibbotson wrote:
On Friday 04 March 2016 13:48:48 Timothy Murphy wrote:
Is it possible to play gnuchess with a board using either knights or xboard (both of which I have installed in my Fedora-23/KDE laptop). I tried "gnuchess --xboard" but no board appeared.
dnf search gnuchess
I have gnuchess installed
See also gnome-chess and knights and xboard. I use Knights. You can choose which chess engine you want to use.
I have installed knights and xboard. But how do you use them with gnuchess ?
I know I could use pychess, but I am asking if I can use gnuchess with knights (preferably) of xboard, and if so how ?
On Friday 04 March 2016 15:23:05 Timothy Murphy wrote:
See also gnome-chess and knights and xboard. I use Knights. You can choose which chess engine you want to use.
I have installed knights and xboard. But how do you use them with gnuchess ?
I know I could use pychess, but I am asking if I can use gnuchess with knights (preferably) of xboard, and if so how ?
Like GUI based software that has been around since the 90's a menu appears when you start it. In the case of Knights you'll see a panel called “new game”. It asks you to select a computer engine. You can also configure an engine in the panel. After you select whatever you want click on OK. If you want to change anything else there is a settings part of the menu at the top of the screen. You can change anything in there. You can also add a new theme.
Richard Ibbotson wrote:
I have installed knights and xboard. But how do you use them with gnuchess ?
Like GUI based software that has been around since the 90's a menu appears when you start it. In the case of Knights you'll see a panel called “new game”. It asks you to select a computer engine. You can also configure an engine in the panel.
Thank you. So one has to start knights, and then choose gnuchess as "computer engine". This strikes me as slightly weird. And what is the option "gnuchess --xboard" meant to do? (It does nothing.) I would have thought an option "gnuchess --knights" (or else a config file .gnuchess where you can specify "knights") would be the rational way to start gnuchess using the knights board.
Allegedly, on or about 05 March 2016, Timothy Murphy sent:
So one has to start knights, and then choose gnuchess as "computer engine". This strikes me as slightly weird. And what is the option "gnuchess --xboard" meant to do? (It does nothing.) I would have thought an option "gnuchess --knights" (or else a config file .gnuchess where you can specify "knights") would be the rational way to start gnuchess using the knights board.
Are you only starting things through the CLI?
I don't play chess, so I don't install it. But I did for my mother, years ago, and there was a menu item to play chess that just started the whole thing in one go.
So, either see if you can start it that way, or have a look at what command line it used in the menu config.
Tim wrote:
So one has to start knights, and then choose gnuchess as "computer engine". This strikes me as slightly weird.
Are you only starting things through the CLI?
I see no other way to start gnuchess.
I don't play chess, so I don't install it. But I did for my mother, years ago, and there was a menu item to play chess that just started the whole thing in one go.
As I said, the only way I see to play gnuchess with a chess board is to start knights (either CLI or from the Applications menu) and then choose gnuchess as the "chess engine". Actually, I don't really mind doing that, as I can choose to be black or white, with gnuchess as opponent.
So, either see if you can start it that way, or have a look at what command line it used in the menu config.
I'm not sure what you mean. I don't see gnuchess in any "menu config".
On 03/06/2016 11:39 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean. I don't see gnuchess in any "menu config".
According to dnf info gnuchess, the program itself runs in a CLI environment, using curses. In order to use it in a GUI, you need to have xboard installed as well. The knights program is a KDE replacement for xboard. Maybe gnuchess will default to knights if xboard isn't installed.
Joe Zeff wrote:
According to dnf info gnuchess, the program itself runs in a CLI environment, using curses. In order to use it in a GUI, you need to have xboard installed as well.
Thanks for your response. I have gnuchess, knights and xboard installed. As I said, adding the --xboards option to gnuchess has no effect.
The knights program is a KDE replacement for xboard. Maybe gnuchess will default to knights if xboard isn't installed.
Possibly. But I am playing (losing) by starting knights, and then saying I want to use gnuchess as chess engine.
I don't mind doing this - but if there is any other way of using gnuchess I would be interested to know.
Allegedly, on or about 06 March 2016, Timothy Murphy sent:
I have gnuchess, knights and xboard installed. As I said, adding the --xboards option to gnuchess has no effect.
"xboard" vs "--xboards"
Have you checked for simple typing and syntax errors?
Tim wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 06 March 2016, Timothy Murphy sent:
I have gnuchess, knights and xboard installed. As I said, adding the --xboards option to gnuchess has no effect.
"xboard" vs "--xboards"
Have you checked for simple typing and syntax errors?
I'm not sure what you mean. According to "gnuchess -h" there is an option -x, --xboard start in engine mode
On my Fedora-23/KDE laptop, "gnuchess -x" produces exactly the same CLI output as "gnuchess".
Nb I have a satisfactory but to me illogical solution - one starts knights and then specifies gnuchess as chess engine. This takes 6 seconds more than a logical command starting with gnuchess. But since it takes 30 minutes for gnuchess to defeat me, this is not significant.
On 07/03/16 16:05, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Tim wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 06 March 2016, Timothy Murphy sent:
I have gnuchess, knights and xboard installed. As I said, adding the --xboards option to gnuchess has no effect.
"xboard" vs "--xboards"
Have you checked for simple typing and syntax errors?
I'm not sure what you mean. According to "gnuchess -h" there is an option -x, --xboard start in engine mode
I had to try this as I am a national master class player, but haven't used gnuchess nor xboard for anything for ages. As I read it the -x switch description it means that -x formats gnuchess out/input for use with xboard, but doesn't necessarily start xboard.
Indeed https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/manual/html_node/XBoard-chess-engine.html indicates the correct incantation to start xboard with gnuchess as the backend, namely
xboard -fcp 'gnuchess --xboard'
/Martin S
On 08/03/16 09:05, Martin Skjöldebrand wrote:
On 07/03/16 16:05, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Tim wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 06 March 2016, Timothy Murphy sent:
I have gnuchess, knights and xboard installed. As I said, adding the --xboards option to gnuchess has no effect.
"xboard" vs "--xboards"
Have you checked for simple typing and syntax errors?
I'm not sure what you mean. According to "gnuchess -h" there is an option -x, --xboard start in engine mode
I had to try this as I am a national master class player, but haven't used gnuchess nor xboard for anything for ages. As I read it the -x switch description it means that -x formats gnuchess out/input for use with xboard, but doesn't necessarily start xboard.
Indeed https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/manual/html_node/XBoard-chess-engine.html indicates the correct incantation to start xboard with gnuchess as the backend, namely
xboard -fcp 'gnuchess --xboard'
knights --help-all doesn't reveal anything to load a specific engine from the command line
/Martin S
On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 12:48 AM, Martin Skjöldebrand <martin@skjoldebrand.eu
wrote:
On 08/03/16 09:05, Martin Skjöldebrand wrote:
On 07/03/16 16:05, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Tim wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 06 March 2016, Timothy Murphy sent:
I have gnuchess, knights and xboard installed. As I said, adding the --xboards option to gnuchess has no effect.
"xboard" vs "--xboards"
Have you checked for simple typing and syntax errors?
I'm not sure what you mean. According to "gnuchess -h" there is an option -x, --xboard start in engine mode
I had to try this as I am a national master class player, but haven't used gnuchess nor xboard for anything for ages. As I read it the -x switch description it means that -x formats gnuchess out/input for use with xboard, but doesn't necessarily start xboard.
Indeed
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/manual/html_node/XBoard-chess-engine.html
indicates the correct incantation to start xboard with gnuchess as the backend, namely
xboard -fcp 'gnuchess --xboard'
knights --help-all doesn't reveal anything to load a specific engine from the command line
Stockfish chess engine is also available for Linux.
On Fri, 2016-03-04 at 13:48 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Is it possible to play gnuchess with a board using either knights or xboard (both of which I have installed in my Fedora-23/KDE laptop). I tried "gnuchess --xboard" but no board appeared.
See also gnome-chess, though I don't know how it compares in playing ability.
poc