User Manual Part 2
Part 1 described the main window and its controls. This part describes additional auxiliary windows and controls.
 | The screen shot to the left shows a Windows 98 desktop with most of the RDChess program windows open. To the left is the Main window, on top of it a search watchdog and below the chess watches.
In the middle above is the Journal (move history), below in the center of the desktop the "Game Data" window (with a large game annotation in the edit field in the lower part of the window). On the right are the "Opening library window" (with 3 opening library moves out of this position) and below an additional "Info window". |
2. Additional windows
The “Windows” Menu items allow to open 6 additional windows for standard chess playing users.
Even 7 more windows are for technical background /debug purposes and show program data like e.g. the usage of the hash tables, search statistics and other data.
Data in all (13) windows are shown in different detail, depending on the configuration checkboxes “Test level 1” and “Test level2” in the tabbed configuration dialog box.
The Journal Window
 | Displays the game history (moves with system or user entered annotations). You may scroll through the chess game positions in the move list with the cursor movement keys (up, down, page up/down, Pos1, End, ..) or by clicking to the line where you want to go in the journal. For each move is displayed - The move number
- Move notation e.g. Bg1f3 (Bishop from square g1 to f3) in pgn format (there exists a configuration switch for long or short notation)
- System or user move annotations inside the { } brackets
|
Move annotation:
Depending on the “Test level 1" and "Test level 2” configuration switches in the Configuration menu a move annotation looks like
{C 1.48/ 218.888/MxViT:14/NSWh:15/NM#:6667/NM-ßCut:5732/HTU:6/Ha-ßCut:6550} and means
C= computer move ( P = player move , B = book move from opening library , 1 = One move flag, D = Direct move from permanent brain)
1.48 evaluation of current position (pawn value = 1.00, + is good for white; minus is good for black. Mxx means mate in xx.
218.888 Number of nodes searched for the calculation of this ply
MxViT: 14 maximal visited search depth = 14
... and further program technical data (NegaScout repetitions NSWH, Null move count NM#, Null move beta cut-offs NM-ßCut, Hash table use count (HTU), Beta cut-offs through hash table use, etc.
By clicking with the right mouse button into a line with a move a popup menu appears and offers a move annotation, which may be edited in an edit control.
The Status Information Window  | Displays (read only) information about the actual current position
like game state, position value, castling rights,
50-move repetition count, position repition count,
computer search level of play, last move, opening type etc. |
The Game Data Window
 | The game data window displays and allows editing data related with the actual loaded chess game.
The window has 3 parts: - standard pgn data fields (event, site, date, name of white and black player, ...) ,
EPD data fields (best move, ..) and a large edit field for a comment to the chess game. |
The Opening Library Window
 | Displays the status and information about the current opening library in use. The RDChess opening library (RDCH_op.lib) has a proprietary format and has to reside in the default RDChess directory. If there is no opening library file found in the current chess directory, a new (empty) opening library is inserted. The program is usually “inside” the library when starting a new chess game from the initial base position and progresses the opening library state as long as the opponent makes moves which are stored for the actual position in the opening library.
An entry in the opening library may contain 0 - 6 moves out of the actual chess position. The computer chooses arbitrarily an opening move out of these 1-6 when it is to move. A move may be marked “active”/ or “passive”.” Passive moves will be used from the computer only if there are no active moves in the current opening library entry for the position. |
One of the 1-6 stored opening book moves may be selected from the move list by double clicking the line with the wished move in the opening library window.
The opening library may be extended by a user through going to a stored position in the opening library and then starting the “learning mode”. Playing a move on the board enters it automatically in the opening library. The program asks for an annotation for each newly entered position.
Clicking the “Stop learning” button stops extending the opening library.
The Chess Watches Window
 | Displays 2 digital watches for the times used so far by the black and white player. In the Tournament and the "ICS" mode the watches display the remaining time until the next time control/ end of game.
The watches may be reset to zero with the "Reset" push button.
When playing in WinBoard mode with use of the "tim/ otim WinBoard protocol commands" the time difference between the remaining times of RDChess and the opponent is displayed additionally. |
The Search Watchdog Window
Is a small window, usually sitting just above the main window. During a computer search it displays the number of visited nodes, the currently favored “best move” (mean continuation, “principal variation”), the evaluation (in centi pawn units) of this variation and some other data (current search depth, progress bar, ..).
Debug windows
There are currently 7 “debug” windows, which are not important for a user just playing chess with the program.
The data may be interesting for users programming chess computers, although I am too lazy to describe here the meaning of all the displayed data.
The “position hash table” window (see below) and the “king + pawn hash table” info window (not shown here) display information about the actual status of the hash tables and its usage within the last search.
 | The iterative search overview window shows in detail the iterative search deepening process of the computer search with search depth, evaluation values measured in centi pawn units (Alfa, Best, Beta), search time, node counts and principal variation for every searched depth. |
The Evaluation data debug window (not shown here) displays various data about the evaluation function values of the current position and the pawn structure.
A Winboard connection debug window shows online all moves and data traffic sent and received over the Winboard interface pipes and logs the data into a Winboard log text file.
Help
The Help menu offers 2 entries
- Clicking "General help" opens a short user manual in English or German language (depending on the language setting in the Options Dialog box),
- Clicking "About" shows a Dialog box with the current RDChess program version and the Copyright notice of the author.
Go to Part 3 (Program installation, ...) of RDChess User Manual
Return to Part 1 of RDChess User Manual
Last modified 2003-06-9 Rudolf Posch
