Re: First draft user manual in GB english, in HTML format, easier to read

[Randy Reade]

This is a great start, Johan.

One thing I see is that needs addressing is the Engine/Favorites menu. Besides the spelling (which should probably be changed in the code to 'Favourites' for en-GB) this (favorites.ini) has changed from a way of creating a group of your favourite engines to a place that holds Special & Historical engines. 

Perhaps we should find a way of bringing back the actual 'Favourites' function. One idea: have a star icon beside the engine name that when selected auto-populates the favorites.ini file and create a new file (e.g., special.ini) to hold the Special & Historical engines. Then we could have 4 categories in the Engine menu (Modern, Favourites, Special, Retro).

Randy

On Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 1:52 a.m. Johan Sjöblom <messi...@gmail.com> wrote:

The intention here is to let AI produce an English manual first, and when we are happy with the structure we will let AI translate it. So lets first comment on this English version... First we could focus on the structure and if something is missing, but you can comment on anything. When we think the manual is ready to be published I will include it in the web client behind some icon to be clicked. This draft is already in the master source under the folder manual.

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[Dirk]

Yes, I would agree bring back the favorites group for some real favorite engines but in addition it would be sad to not having the ever growing group of historical engines starting with Turing, Shannon, etc. anymore (at least for me).

Don’t know how complex  it is to add a real new sub menu for the historical engines besides the favorites. 

Dirk

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Am 14.06.2026 um 16:59 schrieb Randy Reade <randy...@gmail.com>:



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[Johan Sjöblom]

The code that deals with the ini files for engine selection is really simple. But we would need to open an issue and explain how to deal with situations when some ini file is missing… So I would need a liitle bit more of instructions…

[Johan Sjöblom]

But first we need to test the new branch that supports variation side lines… that was quite a bit of heavier work so it needs to be tested properly as it changes save, load, upload and the built-in replay mode.

[Randy Reade]

There would be no missing .ini files. They would be there from the start. We have 3 of them now (engines.ini, favorites.ini, and retro.ini for Modern, Special & Historical, and Retro, respectively). We just need to create a new one (e.g., special.ini) which will become the list of Special & Historical, currently held in favorites.ini, freeing it up so it can hold just your favorite engines. You would then also have a Favorites submenu where you can quickly access this shorter list rather than scrolling through all the engines. Obviously this would benefit the DGTPi and Rev II the most. And it would be optional - you don't need to use it. I would suggest populating it with the latest Stockfish version as default (copied from engines.ini).

This is a low priority enhancement. Just something for the future...

Randy

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[Dirk]

Good points.

And of course it would be unbelievable useful if we would be able to define directly in the engine menu favorite engines (not only via the web interface).

This could be done by having a dedicated engine sub function like „mark as favorite“.

Dirk 

Am 14.06.2026 um 22:26 schrieb Randy Reade <randy...@gmail.com>:



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[Randy Reade]

Yes. The less manual editing of .ini files the better. I guess another option would to use the current .ini files and add some kind of annotation beside the [engine name], perhaps an asterisk to signify a favourite engines and Python code would show those in a separate/additional list in the menu.

Randy