Re: This is a bug

[Alan Bennet]

Hi,

It's working in the terminal because the CURRENT directory is the 
polyglot directory. And it's not working in Xboard because the CURRENT 
directory is the xboard directory. The absolute simplest thing would be 
to put polyglot + ini in the same directory as xboard. The more correct 
way is to adjust the engine parameters as HGM said.

From https://www.wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/PolyGlot.html

(quote)
Usage
-----

PolyGlot acts as an xboard engine.  There should be no difference with
a normal chess program as far as the interface (e.g. WinBoard) is
concerned.

PolyGlot is invoked using "polyglot (missing)".  Note that PolyGlot
will look for the INI file in the current directory.  If no (missing)
is given, "polyglot.ini" is selected.

To use PolyGlot with XBoard, you would type something like this:
> xboard -fd 'ini_dir' -fcp 'polyglot engine.ini'
(/quote)

Seems to be some (missing) polyglot_ini_name in two places there.

Arena has some nice README instructions for using polyglot with 
Winboard. This should work similarly in Xboard, substituting xboard for 
winboard, / for \, and .xboardrc for winboard.ini. From the README.TXT 
for aice engine:

(quote)
Assuming that you have installed AICE in the folder
c:\chess\engines\aice
you can run AICE with Winboard by either starting Winboard from a
command box (A) or editing winboard.ini (B)

A. COMMAND LINE
   Start Winboard with AICE by entering the following command in a
   command box:
      winboard -cp -fcp aice -fd "c:\chess\engines\aice"

B. EDIT WINBOARD.INI
   You can edit the Winboard.ini located in your Winboard installation
   folder (normally C:\Program Files\Winboard) and add the AICE to
   its engines list. You have to append the line:
       aice -fd "c:\chess\engines\aice"
   after the /firstChessProgramNames statement and the line
       aice -sd "c:\chess\engines\aice"
   after the /secondChessProgramNames statement, so your
   winboard.ini file might look like this:

       /firstChessProgramNames={GNUChess,
       "GNUChes5 xboard"
       aice -fd "c:\chess\engines\aice"
       }

       /secondChessProgramNames={GNUChess,
       "GNUChes5 xboard"
       aice -sd "c:\chess\engines\aice"
       }
(/quote)

Arena readme in the winboard.ini section is incorrectly referencing 
GNUChess instead of aice, but you get the idea.

On 4/26/23 12:21 PM, h.g.muller" via XBoard and WinBoard bugs wrote:
> This does sound more like a configuration error than a bug, unless it is 
> a Polyglot bug. Unfortunately the information you give is not sufficient 
> to exactly know what goes wrong. For instance, do you invoke Polyglot by 
> hand, as part of the engine command (-fcp)? If so, what engine command 
> did you use, and where was the Polyglot binary located, and was this 
> directory in the system's search path? Or did you have XBoard invoke the 
> UCI adapter automatically through the -fUCI option? In that case you 
> might have a wrong setting for the -adapterCommand option. (You can see 
> the option settings in the file .xboardrc in your home directory.)
>
> The standard way of invoking Polyglot automatically would invoke it such 
> that it doesn't attempt to access any polyglot.ini file. If you invoked 
> it in such a way that it does need such a file, it obviously isn't in 
> the place Polyglot expects it; this would depend on the directory you 
> specify the engine to run in.
>
> NGUYỄN LONG schreef op 26-04-2023 16:07:
>
> > Hello sir!
> >
> > I am having some difficulties with Xboard. It's work fine with some 
> > engine like fairymax, crafty,... But I don't know why it can't add 
> > more engine like stockfish (with polyglot).
> >
> > when i run polyglot in terminal with command, it work very well. But 
> > in Xboard, it always pop up with an error like "POLYGLOT: main():Can't 
> > open config file "polyglot.ini":no such file or directory"(that file 
> > is always there).
> >
> > the only way i can use the engine is cut a shortcut of Xboard and 
> > paste in the same folder with polyglot and stockfish bin file and open 
> > from it. That's very inconvenient.
> >
> > I hope that you can check that bug and find a solutions for me pls.
> >
> > P/s:Sorry for my bad english.

--
Alan