Respuestas a preguntas frecuentes.

1. What is Alex WBTM?
2. What can Alex WBTM do?
3. What is the first that I must do?
4. What must not I do?
5. Where do I get the external programs?
6. Games atomic, suicide, crazyhouse, losers do not function.
7. Openings Books do not function.
8. Must I use autoquit in Uci Engines?
9. Why when do I copy .exe files in folders Book1, Book2, Motor1, Motor2, program is functioning bad?
10. How do I change personalities in Winboard engines.?

1. What is Alex WBTM?

• AlexWBTM is a program made for to be used  with Tim Man's  Winboard , Fabien Letousey's Polyglot , BookThinker y MakeBook of Lance Perkins, Robert Rozycki's Spar, and David Barnes's Pgn-extract.
• It creates games and tournaments using the GUI Tim Man's Winboard .
• It is seemed to Jori's WBTM and Galis's WBTM, but AlexWBTM can use other programs to increase its functions.
• In AlexWBTM the user will work as easily as Arena or Fritz where you add Uci engines and winboard, create openings books, tournaments, you may search in PGN files, you can change levels to winboard engines, etc.

2. What can Alex WBTM do?

With Winboard, BookThinker, MakeBook, Polyglot, Spar y Pgn-extract installed; Alex WBTM can do:

• It can function as a GUI seemed to Arena and Fritz.
• It accepts Uci engines and winboard.
• It provides openings books to engines.
• You can play in winboard in normal mode, with advantage to use Uci engines and provide openings books to any engine.
• You can do tournaments Round Robin, Suizos, Gauntlet and Matches among winboard engines and uci.
• Games and tournaments may be Normales, Fischer Random, Losers, Suicide, Atomic, Crazyhouse.
• It allows participation of human beings in tournaments, thus you can take part.
• You can create your openings books to test them with several engines.
• You can change levels to winboard engines like Crafty SE, List, TheKing, DeepSjeng, etc.
• You can clean PGNs, erase commentaries, tags, etc.
• You can search in PGNs by name, date, eco, material, position, etc.
• You can change parameters in Uci engines like in Arena or Fritz..

3. What is the first that I must do?

1. Put the path of the folder where you have your Winboard GUI,  in the Settings window, Winboard section.
2. Choose your idiom in the Settings window, Winboard section.
3. Obtain the external programs; Winboard, BookThinker, MakeBook, Polyglot, Spar, Pgn-extract, eco.pgn y Cygwin1.dll (see links section).
4. Install the external programs in the Settings window, Utilities section.
5. Begin to add engines in the Settings window, Engine section.
6. Get logos for your engines and put them in the folders of each engine with same name, Alex WBTM recognizes bmp, jpg and gif.
7. Create openings books from PGNs in the Settings window, Book tab. If you have some error, you must clean the PGN in PGN section.
8. In Settings window, Book tab, you must put a book for whites and other for blacks.

4.  What must not I do?

You must not put in folders Book1, Book2, Polyglot1, Polyglot2, .exe files because AlexWBTM will not function well.
I recommend you do not put files in the folders of the program manually.

5.  Where do I get the external programs?

How I am not author of those programs you must get them in authors's web.

Winboard GUI
Created by Tim Man:
http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html

BookThinker.exe and MakeBook.exe
Createds by Lance Perkins you must download complete program;
http://www.geocities.com/thechessthinker

Polyglot.exe and Cygwin1.dll
Created by Fabien Letousey, he have not web but WBEC provides it in Dowloads section;
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/
Besides provides Cygwin1.dll, which you need too.
Other site is Dan Corbit's ftp, where you can get them.
ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/chess-engines/new-approach/

Spar.exe
Created by Robert Rozycki in 1996 you can get it in:
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/chess/Chess/Links/Pittsburgh/uti.html

Pgn-extract.exe and eco.pgn
Created by David Barnes you can get them in:
http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/
If you have problems, I recommend to use pgn-extract compiled by Jim Ablett which functions well in win98, winME and XP.
http://homepages.tesco.net/henry.ablett/jims.html
 

6.  Games atomic, suicide, crazyhouse, losers do not function.

The engines for these games must be special and winboard (not uci).  Common engines only will be able to play games Normal and Fischer Random.

By example my favorites are:
Sjeng 11.2 play Suicide, Losers y Crazyhouse.
KKfChess play Suicide, Losers, Crazyhouse y Atomic.

7.  Openings Books do not function.

You must create openings books of PGN files in Settings window, Book section.
You must assign an book to each engine in Settings window, Engine section. You may assign same book to the engines or different.
When you choose to the engine as participant, you must mark it in Participants list.

8.  Must I use Autoquit in Uci Engines?

Polyglot functions well with all engines but with very few it has a bug which is corrected with autoquit option, example Shredder, LGRevival. These engines at the end of game when Winboard is closed, they remain in RAM memory. Autoquit corrects this bugs but is limiting to only one game. AlexWBTM at the end of each game is checking RAM memory and if engines remain there, they are erased.

10. Why when do I copy .exe files in folders Book1, Book2, Polyglot1, Polyglot2, program is functioning bad.?

Program keeps in Book1 BookThinker for Whites and in Book2 BookThinker for Blacks, but AlexWBTM often renames BookThinker by engine name that is using it. Consequently program does not seek to BookThinker.exe in folders Book1 and Book2, it seeks only an file .exe with whatever name and the first found AlexWBTM considers it as BookThinker. Same thing happens in folders Uci/Polyglot1, Uci/Polyglot2, there AlexWBTM keeps Polyglot in Polyglot1 folder for Whites and in Polyglot2 for Blacks and renames them too.

11.  How do I change personalities in winboard engines?

1- You need a file called Level.txt which yourself must create.
2- A folder Logos where you must keep all logos of the personalities (optional).
Both, Logos folder and Level.txt must be put in engine folder.

If in the folder of an engine exists a file called Level.txt when you select this engine in menu Available Engines and you press right button of the mouse, The three options for ordering will appear, besides you will be able to see a option fourth, "Level". When you select it then will appear a window where you will be able to change personalities of the engine.

How to create Level.txt file.

AlexWBTM know 2 forms of adjustment of personalities or levels in winboard engines;
-         Settings file.    (Crafty, Delfi, Rebel, DeepSjeng, etc)
-         InitString         (TheKing)

Level.txt must have a section "Data" where you must put the following things:

How TheKing does not use Settings file, its Data section only will have:

[Data]
Type=InitString

Now, We will put the personalities, which we can put in an only section or several sections.
For example with Crafty I sort your levels thus:

Max/Champions/Masters/Easy/Rating, AlexWBTM only supports as max 5 sections. Continuing:
 

I show another section:

[Masters]
Adroit=adroit
Expert=expert
LowMaster=low_master
Master=master
HighMaster=high_master
InternacionalMaster=im
GMaster=gm

If you want to see my Level.txt full for Crafty, you can get it in Download section.

The files Level.txt in Download section are ready for to be used.

For TheKing I only put default level.
 

[Default]
TheKing323d= cm_parm opk=123456 opp=100 opn=100 opb=100 opr=100 opq=100 myp=100 myn=100 myb=100 myr=100 myq=100 mycc=100 mymob=100 myks=100 mypp=100 mypw=100 opcc=100 opmob=100 opks=100 oppp=100 oppw=100 cfd=0 sop=100 avd=0 rnd=0 sel=9 md=99\ncm_parm tts=16777216\nxboard\nnew\n

Some engines like DeepSjeng do not have variable in these cases you must put in Variable;
Variable=##

Here I put a part as example:

[Data]
Type=File
File=Sjeng.rc
Variable=##
[Niveles]
none=none
Alekhine=Alekhine.per
Tarrash=Tarrash.per

If you have logos for your engine personalities you must do this;

• You must put them in a folder called "Logos".
• You must put the folder Logos in the same folder of engine, file Level.txt too.
• The names of logos must be as the variables of left side of the personalities, the same name that you will see in Level menu of AlexWBTM, by example if you have Crafty_1915=Standard the name of logo must be Crafty_1915 and not Standard.
• Logos can be bmp, jpg, gif, AlexWBTM does not accept others formats.