What is XBoard?
===============
XBoard is a graphical chessboard for the X Window System.  It can
serve as a user interface for chess engines such as Fairy-Max,
Crafty or GNU Chess, for the Internet Chess Server, or for electronic
mail correspondence chess. It supports all major forms of chess, such
as international chess, xiangqi and shogi. XBoard can also be used by
itself as viewer for stored chess games.  See the manual page for
further details.

XBoard is free software, copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation
and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  See the file
COPYING for details.

You can build xboard on most systems with the following commands.

	./configure
	make

See the file INSTALL for more detailed instructions.

See the file FAQ.html for answers to frequently asked questions.


What is WinBoard?
=================
WinBoard is a port of XBoard to run natively on Windows.  It is part
of the XBoard project and is released under the same terms as XBoard.

You can build WinBoard using the free Cygwin toolchain from
www.cygnus.com with the following commands.

	cd winboard
	make -f makefile.gcc

You can build WinBoard using Microsoft Visual C with the following
commands, or by opening the project in Visual Studio and clicking the
build button.

	cd winboard
	nmake -f makefile.ms


Reporting problems
==================

Report bugs and problems with XBoard and WinBoard to
<bug-xboard@gnu.org>.  With XBoard, please use the "script" program
to start a typescript, run XBoard with the -debug command line option,
and include the typescript output in your message.  With WinBoard,
please use the /debug command line option and include the contents of
the file WinBoard.debug.  Also tell us what kind of machine and what
operating system version you are using.  On Unix, the command "uname
-a" will tell you this.  On Windows, right-click on My Computer and
select Properties.

Here is a sample of approximately what you should type (on Unix):

    script
    uname -a
    ./configure
    make
    ./xboard -debug
    exit
    mail bug-xboard@gnu.org
    Subject: Your short description of the problem
    Your detailed description of the problem
    ~r typescript
    .

If you improve XBoard, please send a message about your changes, and
we will get in touch with you about merging them in to the main line
of development.
