XBoard features I have been working on since my last push (in February 2018) to
the Savannah 4.9.x branch, which already are in my on-line git repository (
http://hgm.nubati.net/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi ) are:
* Improvement of Position Setup mode:
In particular the clock that is used as a button for clearing the board will
now display the appropriate text for indicating its function, and will adapt
during the cllear cycle (palette -> empty -> initial -> old). Also a new
placement mode has been added, where a right-click on a piece 'picks up' that
piece type for multi-dropping, and every subsequent left-click on an empty
square will then place such a piece. Starting from the 'palette' board (which
contains every piece type once) this makes very fast setup possible.
* I tried to simplify the WinBoard Load Engine dialogs to make them more
self-evident, and added autodetection of engine type (CECP vs UCI) as an option.
* Use of the 'nice' system call on spawned engine processes was improved to
take account of protocol adapters that can nice the engines themselves (as it
is in general undesirable that an adapter runs at reduced CPU priority).
* It was made possible to play variant seirawan with preselected squares for
gating new pieces onto the board ('holdingless Seirawan'), rather than allowing
this choice to be made during game play
* It was made possible to have engines conduct a 'graphical dialog' with a
human user, e.g. for the purpose of picking which pieces must participate, or
which square these should start on. Some variants have such a 'prelude'. The
idea is that the engine can order display of an arbitrary chess position as a
'graphical menu' for selecting pieces or partial setups, from which the user
can then select by clicking one of the pieces.
* I added Janggi (Korean Chess) as a new standard variant.
* I extended CECP with a command for requesting a dice roll by the engine, and
implemented that command. (For variants that use dice.)
* Fixed some bugs.
Beside that, I have just started to see if the WinBoard JAWS patch can still be
used in newer versions (last JAWS release was 4.5.2).
