CMAIL(6)CMAIL(6)NAMEcmail - an email chess helper
SYNOPSIScmail [options]
DESCRIPTION
The cmail program will help you play chess by email with
opponents of your choice using an X interface. To use it,
you will need to be able to run xboard with which cmail is
distributed, available by anonymous FTP from numerous
sites around the world. It has been tested with xboard
3.2; it may require modification for other versions.
OPTIONS
You will usually run cmail without giving any options.
See the next section for instructions.
-h Displays cmail usage information.
-c Shows the conditions of the GNU General Public
License.
-w Shows the warranty notice of the GNU General Pub-
lic License.
-[x]v Provides or inhibits verbose output from cmail and
xboard, useful for debugging. The -xv form also
inhibits the cmail introduction message.
-[x]mail
Invokes or inhibits the sending of a mail message
containing the move.
-[x]xboard
Invokes or inhibits the running of xboard on the
game file.
-[x]reuse
Invokes or inhibits the reuse of an existing
xboard to display the current game.
-remail Resends the last mail message for that game. This
inhibits running xboard.
-game name
The name of the game to be processed.
-(w|b|)games number
Number of games to start as White, as Black or in
total. Default is 1 as white and none as black. If
only one colour is specified then none of the
other colour is assumed. If no colour is specified
then equal numbers of White and Black games are
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CMAIL(6)CMAIL(6)
started, with the extra game being as White if an
odd number of total games is specified.
-(me|opp) short name
A one-word alias for yourself or your opponent.
-(w|b|my|opp)name full name
The full name of White, Black, yourself or your
opponent.
-(w|b|my|opp)na net address
The email address of White, Black, yourself or
your opponent.
-dir directory
The directory in which cmail keeps its files. This
defaults to the environment variable $CMAIL_DIR or
failing that, $CHESSDIR, $HOME/Chess or ~/Chess.
It will be created if it does not exist.
-arcdir directory
The directory in which cmail archives completed
games. Defaults to the environment variable
$CMAIL_ARCDIR or, in its absence, the same direc-
tory as cmail keeps its working files (above).
-mailprog mail program
The program used by cmail to send email messages.
This defaults to the environment variable
$CMAIL_MAILPROG or failing that "/usr/ucb/Mail",
"/usr/ucb/mail" or "Mail". You will need to set
this variable if none of the above paths fit your
system.
-gamesFile file
A file containing a list of games with email
addresses. This defaults to the environment vari-
able $CMAIL_GAMES or failing that .cmailgames.
-aliasesFile file
A file containing one or more aliases for a set of
email addresses. This defaults to the environment
variable $CMAIL_ALIASES or failing that
.cmailaliases.
-logFile file
A file in which to dump verbose debugging messages
that are invoked with the -v option.
-event event
The PGN Event tag (default "Email correspondence
game").
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CMAIL(6)CMAIL(6)-site site
The PGN Site tag (default "NET").
-round round
The PGN Round tag (default "-", not applicable).
-mode mode
The PGN Mode tag (default "EM", Electronic Mail).
OTHER OPTIONS
Any unrecognised flags will be passed to xboard. Those
most relevant for use with cmail are:
-timeDelay (or -td) delay
This sets the speed at which the moves are dis-
played on start-up. It defaults to the environment
variable $CMAIL_TIME_DELAY if set, and 0 other-
wise.
-noChessProgram (True | False), or -[x]ncp
If this option is False, xboard starts a chess
program which can be used with cmail to suggest
moves. Default: True.
-searchTime (or -st) minutes[:seconds]
Tells GNU Chess to spend at most the given amount
of time searching for each of its moves. Without
this option, GNU Chess chooses its search time
based on the number of moves and amount of time
remaining until the next time control.
-searchDepth (or -sd) number
Tells GNU Chess to look ahead at most the given
number of moves when searching for a move to make.
Without this option, GNU Chess chooses its search
depth based on the number of moves and amount of
time remaining until the next time control.
-saveGameFile (or -sgf) file
If this option is set, xboard appends a record of
the game played to the specified file on exit.
-autosave or -autoSaveGames
If this option is True, at the end of every game
xboard prompts you for a filename and appends a
record of the game to the file you specify.
-savePositionFile (or -spf) file
If this option is set, xboard appends the final
position reached to the specified file on exit.
-boardSize (or -size) (Large | Medium | Small)
Determines how large the board will be and what
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built-in piece bitmaps will be used. On a large
board (the default), pieces are 80x80 pixels, on a
medium board 64x64 pixels, and on a small board
40x40 pixels.
STARTING A GAME
Type cmail from a shell to start a game as white. After
an opening message, you will be prompted for a game name,
which is optional -- if you simply press return, the game
name will take the form you-VS-opponent. You will next be
prompted for the short name of your opponent. If you
haven't played this person before, you will also be
prompted for his/her email address. cmail will then
invoke xboard in the background. Make your first move and
select Mail Move from the File menu. If all is well,
cmail will mail a copy of the move to your opponent. If
you select Exit without having selected Mail Move then no
move will be made.
ANSWERING A MOVE
When you receive a message from an opponent containing a
move in one of your games, simply pipe the message through
cmail. In some mailers this is as simple as typing "|
cmail" when viewing the message, while in others you may
have to save the message to a file and do "cmail < file"
at the command line. In either case cmail will display
the game using xboard. If you didn't exit xboard when you
made your first move then cmail will do its best to use
the existing xboard instead of starting a new one. As
before, simply make a move and select Mail Move from the
File menu. cmail will try to use the xboard that was most
recently used to display the current game. This means that
many games can be in progress simultaneously, each with
its own active xboard.
If you want to look at the history or explore a variation,
go ahead, but you must return to the current position
before xboard will allow you to mail a move. If you edit
the game's history you must select Reload Same Game from
the File menu to get back to the original position, then
make the move you want and select Mail Move. As before,
if you decide you aren't ready to make a move just yet you
can either select Exit without sending a move or just
leave xboard running until you are ready.
COMPLETING A GAME
Because xboard can now detect checkmate and stalemate,
cmail now handles game termination sensibly. As well as
resignation, the Action menu now allows draws to be
offered and accepted for cmail games.
For multi-game messages, only unfinished and just-finished
games will be included in email messages. When all the
games are finished, they are archived in the user's
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archive directory, and similarly in the opponent's when he
or she pipes the final message through cmail. The archive
file name includes the date the game was started.
MULTI-GAME MESSAGES
It's possible to have a cmail message carry more than one
game. This feature was implemented to handle IECG (Inter-
national Email Chess Group) matches, where a match con-
sists of 1 game as white and 1 as black, with moves trans-
mitted simultaneously. In case there are more general
uses, cmail itself places no limit on the number of
black/white games contained in a message; however, xboard
does.
TROUBLE SHOOTING
It's possible that a strange conjunction of conditions may
occasionally mean that cmail has trouble reactivating an
existing xboard. If this should happen, simply trying it
again should work. If not, remove the file that stores the
xboard's PID (<game>.pid) or use the -xreuse option to
force cmail to start a new xboard.
Versions of cmail after 2.16 no longer understand the old
file format that xboard used to use and so cannot be used
to correspond with anyone using an older version.
Versions of cmail older than 2.11 do not handle multi-game
messages, so multi-game correspondence is not possible
with opponents using an older version.
FILES
".cmailgames" contains a list of games with the email
addresses of the opponents.
".cmailaliases" contains one or more aliases for a set of
email addresses.
BUGS
No known bugs.
BUG REPORTS
I make no promises but if you send bug reports/suggestions
to welsh@epcc.ed.ac.uk I'll do my best to fix/implement
them.
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
cmail is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.
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CMAIL(6)CMAIL(6)cmail is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied war-
ranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PUR-
POSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with cmail; if not, write to the Free Soft-
ware Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139,
USA.
Author: Evan Welsh <welsh@epcc.ed.ac.uk>
Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
JCMB, Kings Buildings
The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh EH9 3JZ
Scotland
CONTRIBUTORS
Patrick Surry helped with design, testing and documenta-
tion.
Tim Mann helped integrate cmail with xboard.
SEE ALSOMail(1), perl(1), xboard(1)
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