Xboard default engine Fairymax does not use any opening book

[latrom]

Hello. I just noticed that behavior. It could be fixed by defaulting to gnuchess with the opening book packages or supplying fairymax a default opening book.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: xboard 4.6.2-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-6.13-generic 3.8.0-rc7
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-6-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.8-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Feb 17 13:13:55 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-01-29 (19 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xboard
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[H.G.Muller (h-g-muller)]

Why is this considered a 'bug', and why does this need fixing at all?

Opening books are (often very) bulky architecture-independent data, which does not belong in binary packages. That holds both for XBoard and for GNU Chess. Books should go in their own package.

In addition, XBoard is not dependent on any engine for handling opening books; it can handle such books directly. The user just has to give the filename of the book (through a file-browse dialog, if desired) and tick a checkbox to enable its use. Having engines handle the book is a stupid way to do it, because then you still wouldn't have a book when you want to use another engine.

H.G. Muller
upstream XBoard developer