Re: [Bug-XBoard] [bug #26126] Enhancement: XBoard support for MiniChess 2007

[h.g. muller]

Note that most of the changes this patch requires involve 'divorcing' the 
board width and board height
from each other, and making them variables rather than constants. All this 
is already standard in
XBoard 4.3.15.

MiniChess 2007/2009 are not amongst the variants officially supported in 
XBoard 4.3.15, although
they can be played by using the command-line options to overrule the board 
format -boardWidth
and -boardHeigt, and supplying a FEN for the opening position with 
-loadPositionFile. Any protocol v2
engine  playing this variant would have to acknowledge it knows it by 
including 5x6_normal in its
feature variants="..." command.

To play the 2009 variant would require legality checking to be turned off, 
in order for the GUI to accept
the Bishop move. (An alternative would be too use the Shogi Dragon Horse in 
stead of a Bishop
in the initial setup, although this would err in the other direction, by 
also accepting Wazir-like captures.)

Making a patch to add MiniChess support to Board 4.3.15 as standard variant 
would therefore be quite
trivial, limited to adding its name to the list of variants, making an 
entry for it in the "New Variant..." menu,
and supplying the initial position.

H.G.