Accessible Chess – XBoard

The main window contains several elements:

1. A title bar actively used to display information 
2. A menubar, through which you can control XBoard
3. Two chess clocks, for white and black 
4. An optional button bar, with which you can navigate through the current game
5. A single-line message field, where moves, variations, and sometimes texts are displayed
6. An area where the chess board (and sometimes other stuff) is drawn

The XBoard Comment window shows PGN file comments and variations for the current move, updating as you progress. Left-click for editing, right-click to promote a PGN variation to the main line, storing the original for later. Step through variations to display on the board.

The Move List in SAN notation includes game moves with optional score/depth comments. Left-click for editing (primarily copying), while right-clicking (or left-double-clicking in WinBoard) navigates to the position after that move, displaying it on the board and enabling game progression from there.

The Edit Book window in chess software displays available moves for the current position and supports standard editing functions like the Tags window. Press a button at the bottom to save changes.

The Mode menu in chess software clarifies XBoard’s actions. Options like Machine White and Machine Black allow the user to play against the first engine, while Two Machines makes both engines play each other. XBoard returns to idle mode after the game ends. Machine Match makes the engines play a series of games, alternating colors, until manually stopped or reaching the specified number of games in Match Options.

When connected to an Internet Chess Server (ICS), XBoard can communicate through the terminal or a dedicated window (available in the GTK build from the View menu). The window displays ICS output in an upper pane and provides a text entry at the bottom for typing commands to the ICS. Right-clicking in the upper pane opens the ICS Text Menu, which can use the clicked word as the $name variable in selected commands, such as ‘challenge’ or ‘finger’ a specific person who ‘shouted’ in the window.

XBoard offers manual saving of games or positions, with the option to set up automatic saving in the Save Options dialog after each game. If a file is specified, games will be appended to it without overwriting. Otherwise, XBoard will prompt for a file name, suggesting one based on the players. Saving as PGN format is recommended.

This dialog sets parameters for all engines, like hash-table size, tablebase buffer size, core usage, and tablebase installation location. Most UCI engines (run via Polyglot adapter) require these settings. Native XBoard engines may ignore them as they lack the protocol commands. ‘Polyglot directory’ refers to where the Polyglot executable is located; on Linux, it can often remain empty as Polyglot is typically in a searchable directory.

This dialog adjusts settings for Internet Chess Server (ICS) play. It allows setting colors for different types of ICS messages and enables colorization with the Colorize option. Additionally, it lets you toggle premoving on or off and specify premoves for the first move of the game.

The Board Options dialog in the View menu allows configuring the board’s appearance. You can render squares evenly colored or using an external image file (pixmap).

XBoard can’t produce sounds but can use an external sound player for predefined sounds linked to events like moves, game outcomes, and server interactions. Events like challenges, messages, or broadcasts on an Internet Chess Server can trigger sounds. Select sounds from drop-down lists or use custom sound files by choosing ‘Above WAV File’. Set your preferred sound player command and sound directory in the settings.