Xgospel user's guide

This manual documents how to install and run Xgospel. This document corresponds to xgospel version 1.12d. Questions about this document should be sent to Minh Quy Nguyen.

Installing xgospel

You will find the xgospel sources or its binary distributions at Jean-loup's Go page.

To install xgospel from a binary distribution, you should just have to extract the tar.gz file with:

   gunzip < xgospel-1.12d.xxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -

where xxx is the name of your system. If you have GNU tar, you can use:

   tar xzf xgospel-1.12d.xxx.tar.gz

gzip binaries are available from http://www.gzip.org

Getting started

This section explains some xgospel's basic features, including how to start an xgospel session, get help, edit the command line, and edit the resource and the startup file.

Invoking xgospel

After you installed xgospel, on most systems, the way to invoke xgospel is with the shell command 'xgospel'.The program displays the Main window and ask your user name user

and your password

If you entered correctly your login name and your password, then you're connected to IGS.

Normally, xgospel is used interactively by running the program xgospel without any arguments. Once started, xgospel reads commands from its main window until you tell it to exit.

You can further control how xgospel starts by using the command-line options describe in the next section, and xgospel can remind you of the options available.Type 'xgospel -h' to display all available options and briefly describe their use.

Command line options

Here is a complete list of all the command line options that xgospel accepts.

-user

-password secret
Specify the password corresponding to your username

-host , -site site
Specify the site to connect to

-port
Specify the port to corresponding to site

-debugfile filename
Specify the file to log interaction with IGS

-debugfun integer
Set program debugging flags

-debug
Turn on internal widget debugging.Using this optionwill cause xgospel's parser to print a lot of information about the commands it reads, and probably onlu useful if you are trying to debug the parser

The XGospel file

This file specifies all the resources that xgospel needs when running. Normally, you have an example of the resource file named XGospel.res. Copy it to the file Xgospel (

cp Xgospel.res
Xgospel

) and make changes only to the file XGospel.
If you have never used xgospel before, you may have to load the resource file from your .xinitrc or your .xsession. If you don't know what a resource file is, try:

   cd $HOME; grep xrdb .xinitrc .xsession .Xclient

If this shows something, your resource file is the parameter of xrdb ; add the contents of XGospel at the end. Otherwise just add the line

   xrdb XGospel

in your file .xinitrc, .xsession or .Xclient (whichever is used).

For recent versions of X, it may be sufficient to copy XGospel.res to the directory $XAPPLRESDIR (usually ~/app-defaults) and rename it as XGospel

You can in this file:

specify your username : xgospel*User:yourigsname
and password : xgospel*Password:yourpassword
set the size and color of the xgospel-windows
list of your IGS friends, for example : xgospel, Friend
and enemies, for example : escaper, Enemy
sort the players according to their rank and their importance, so that the player-window displays them in a particular color.
choose the color of the players acording their status (open, looking)
set the raise-state of the xgospel windows : (of course, you can change these states directly on the specified window), for example, if you don't want that shout-window raises each time a shout appears, you have to set False the xgospel*broadcasts*raise.state
mark dame and/or territories in scoring mode, and choose the color of the dame points
set the number of seconds for each move when replaying a game automatically: xgospel*replayTimeout: 2
set the rate (in seconds) at which to update the players window: xgospel*playersUpdateTimeout: 15
set the rate (in seconds) at which xgospel sends "who" command: xgospel*whoTimeout: 300
and "games" command: xgospel*gamesTimeout: 300. You have to increase this rate if you have too much netlag.

Of course, Xgospel offers many other features well described in the file XGospel in itself, and I stronly recommend reading it.

The startup file

Once you're connected to IGS, xgospel looks for commands to execute from the .xgospelrc file. The .xgospelrc file should be placed in your home directory. For example, you can put in this file :

user fr

notify jl

and xgospel will execute them as if you type these commands in the command-line just after connection.

These commands are also executed each time you click on the "User" button.

Quitting Xgospel

You can exit the program by simply clicking on the "Quit" button or by placing the mouse cursor on any xgospel window and type on the keyboard Alt+Q. You can set the time that the programs takes to quit in the XGospel resource file.

Getting Help

You can obtain information by pressing shift+left mouse button on windows or by clicking on the "Help" button. Click again on the Help button to exit the help mode.

Command line editing

xgospel is now ready to use.

Windows

The Main window

The Games window

The Games windows gives you informations about all the current games (number of game, names of players and their ranks, number of moves played,, the byoyomi ...). You can sort all these games by the rank of their players or by their number. By choosing the option "raise" in Options, xgospel will warn you when a game between very strong players starts.
At the bottom of this window, xgospel displays information on new games created or gives results on current games.
By clicking on one of these field, you choose the game to observe and a game window will raise.
The Update option forces an immediate update of this window. Normally, xgospel updates these informations automatically, according the time you set in your XGospel resource file.

The Tell window

The Tell window is used to discuss with another IGS user. You can create this window by clicking on a user name in the Players window, or by typing in the main window: tell user_name.
You can save all the contents of this windows by clicking on the Save button. This will save in a file named chouette_NR.tell. In Options, you can enable xgospel to overwrite this file.

The Players window

This window gives all informations about players connected on igs. Like for the Games window, you can sort all these players according to their rank or your own preference. In the XGospel file, you can list all your igs friends or enemies and chose a special color for them in this Players window.
Clicking the left mouse button on one player raises the Tell window for this player. With the middle mouse button, you can see his Stats window.
Press shift + left mouse button in the Player window, you will have useful informations about the meaning of the figures displayed near the name of the player.
At the bottom, live information about who is connecting or disconnecting. (Your toggle quiet should be off to see these informations).

The Broadcasts window

If your toggle shout is on, you can see all the shouts in this window.
The ++ after the vampire's shout means that this shout is repeated twice.

The Channels window

When you edit the title of the channel, you have to confirm it with Enter .

The Stats window

You can have the Stats window by clicking on the Stats button on the Tell window or by simply typing "stats username" in the Main window. Another possibility is using the middle mouse button in the Player window.
In the Stats window, you can set your info, toggle an option (by clicking on the field of the the toggle you want to change), see your rating and your recent results.
The player rating is displayed with two decimals only if you have a rating yourself, that is, if you are not NR.
You can set toggle "open" and "looking" also with Alt+O and Alt+L respectively.
Here, the close botton is blue : i only want to remind you that you can set the color you want to by editing
in your XGospel fille : *stats.collect.close.background: Red

The Analyse window

When you are observing a game, or even during your own game, some sequences may be beyond your reading ability. You can use the analyse window to help you in your reflexion. In the Commands button, choose analyse.
For example, white wants to kill black here, but the ladder involved here requires that you can read 273 moves in advance ...

With this Analyze window, you can move and remove the the stones you want to. To recover the initial position, choose Reset in the Commands menu.
Thanks to that, agneau starts the capture with Wd2, Bc2, Wb2, Be2, Wa4, Bd1, Wb1, Bc1, Wf1, Bf2, Wg1.
The ladder starts with We1 and finishes with Ws19.

Playing a game

Starting a game

You can with this window set all the parameters of the match when challenging your opponent. Once the game is started, you can select the handicap or the komi with the handicap or komi menu in the game window.

When you are challenging, click on ok or decline to accept the match or to refuse.

This window appears when clicking on the Challenge button in the Tell window.

The game

Finishing the game

The counting procedure starts after 3 consecutives "pass". And the game finishes after both players typed "done".

Before clicking on the done button, you have to check with if you don't forget to remove some prisonners. Thanks to the color marks, you can verify it quickly.