Arasan Chess 14.3 Readme

This readme file contains information about Arasan, a chess-playing
program. Versions of Arasan are available for Linux, MacOS and
Windows. This readme covers only the Windows version.

Arasan comes with its own graphical user interface, but it can also be
used together with Winboard, a separate interface program, as well
as other interfaces that follow the Winboard or UCI standard. One
example is Arena (http://www.playwitharena.com).

Arasan's own interface has on-line help, which you should see if you
need more information. This rest of this file has setup and usage 
information for using Arasan with Windows user interfaces, such as
Winboard.


Copyright, distribution

Arasan 14.3 copyright 1994-2012 by Jon Dart. All Rights Reserved.

See license.txt in the installation directory for information about
licensing of Arasan software.


Winboard

Winboard can be used to play games against Arasan, play Arasan against
other chess programs, and connect Arasan to an Internet chess server.

You can download Winboard from http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html and 
many other locations. Arasan is designed to work with Winboard
version 4.2.2 or higher. Other versions of Winboard may work, but 
this is not guaranteed.


Using Winboard as a user interface

To play a game against the Arasan chess engine using Winboard, start
winboard with the -fcp switch (short for -firstChessProgram), like this:

   winboard -cp -fcp "c:\arasanx -H 64M"

You need to specify the full path to where arasanx is installed (such as
c:\arasanx).

Arasanx recognizes a -H switch that can be used to specify the hash
table size. The hash size is in bytes: 'K', 'M' or 'G' can be used to
indicate kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes. Arasanx also recognizes an
optional -t flag that will show some debugging output in the window or
log file when used together with the "-debugMode true" switch to
winboard. You normally shouldn't have to turn this on. Other options
can be set by editing the "arasan.rc" file in the install directory.

(Recent version of Winboard also allow setting some options from the
winboard command line. For example -smpCores can be used to set the
number of cores in use, -defaultHashSize can be used to set the hash
size. But options passed to arasanx take precedence over those passed
to Winboard).


Playing against another chess program

You can use arasanx to make Arasan play games against Crafty, Gnuchess,
or other programs that support the Winboard interface. To do this, use
the -fcp and -scp switches to Winboard. A typical command line looks
like this:

winboard -cp -fcp "c:\arasan\arasanx.exe -H 64M" 
  -scp "c:\crafty\crafty.exe"

(type this all together on one line. It can also be put into a batch
file for convenience).

After invoking Winboard, select "Two Machines" in the Mode menu to make
the computers play against one another. 

You can also use the -mg argument to Winboard to cause the two engines
to play a match of several games automatically. See the Winboard documen-
tation for details.


ICS Support

Arasan can also be used to make the program play on an Internet chess
server (it isn't designed to allow humans to play on a server - there
are other and better programs for that.).

To make Arasan play on a server, you need an interface program, since
arasanx itself has no ability to connect to the Internet. Winboard
version 3.5 or higher has the necessary interface code built in.
A typical command line to make arasanx play on a server might look
like this:

winboard -ics -zp -autoflag -fcp "c:\arasan\arasanx.exe -ics -H 64M"

Please be honest when you put the computer on a chess server: tell the
administrators first, get permission to use a computer, and follow any
rules that they have for computer accounts.


Options

Many aspects of Arasan's behavior can be modified by changing the
arasan.rc file that is installed in the program directory. See comments
in this file for details. If you do change it, I recommend retaining a
backup copy so you can restore the default settings if you make a mis-
take or later decide you don't like your changes.


Tablebases

Arasan supports Nalimov or Gaviota format compressed tablebases. You
can configure Arasan to use tablebases by editing the arasan.rc file,
or by using a GUI that supports UCI or Winboard option commands.

The Arasan distribution does not come with any tablebase files. You
can download Nalimov tablebase files from ftp.cis.uab.edu, directory
/pub/hyatt, among other locations. Gaviota tablebase files are
available from http://www.olympuschess.com/egtb/gaviota/. 


UCI 

Arasan now supports the UCI protocol in addition to Winboard. UCI is
used by several chess user interface programs, including Arena 
(http://www.playwitharena.com) and Shredder from Chessbase. No special
action is required to enable UCI support: if the chess UI sends
UCI commands, Arasan will respond.


Support

You can get the latest version of the program and contact information for
reporting bugs at http://www.arasanchess.org.

If you think you have found a bug in Arasan, please be sure to specify 
what version you have and provide as much detail as possible about the 
problem. It might be helpful if you could run Winboard with the 
"-debugMode true" switch and ArasanX with the -t switch, and provide me 
with the log output that Winboard creates.

If you have trouble running ArasanX under Winboard, trouble connecting
to an Internet chess server, or other operational problems, you might
want to check the FAQ on Tim Mann's website
(http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard/FAQ.html),
which includes more information about Winboard.
