Bug#737347: xboard: wish for pre-4.8 snapshot for experimental to get new features more exposure

[Yann Dirson]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:30:59PM +0100, h.g.muller at hccnet.nl wrote:
> Op Do, 13 februari, 2014 10:10 pm schreef Yann Dirson:
> >
> > * "@shogi @sho" gives a strange result, with no traditional tile for
> > the elephant, ...
> 
> This is because we don't have a tile for the Elephant yet in the Shogi
> kanji piece set. ($(datadir)/xboard/themes/shogi/WhiteElephant.svg etc.)
> This set was simply ripped from some GPL'ed shogi program, which
> apparently did not support Sho. I don't like them much anyway, I think the
> old xShogi pieces were much nicer (but alas, not SVG).

If we have an easy way to convert a TTF font's glyphs to SVG, we can
easily compose new pieces.  In Omaha, I compose a virgin SVG piece
with rendering of a TTF font - it will make it easier to customise,
letting users select their own font; you might want to go this way as
well.


> > ... whereas "@shogi @chu" is more consistent by forcing the
> > western theme to avoid the problem
> 
> Well, @chu defines its own -pieceImageDirectory, which overrules the one
> defined in the @shogi file.  Apparently you don't have the chu pieces
> installed, that it falls back on the default set.

Hm, "-pid ~~/themes/chu" assumes hachu installed the svg, it seems.
Wouldn't it be better to ship the theme with xboard ?  If 2 humans can
play Chu in xboard without hachu installed, with western style, why
not letting them play with japanese style in the same conditions ?


> > * with @mini, two-machine game, the white king starts by capturing his
> > own pawn.  Have to investigate: I have not tested gnuminishogi much in
> > xboard mode, relying on shogi tests only till now.  At least I have no
> > such problem in Omaha, there may be something linked to the commands sent
> > by xboard (omaha is very minimalist in what it requests). Will keep you
> > informed on this.
> 
> OK, I will have a look to this as well.

Don't spend too much time on this, I will polish a fix and push it this WE.