GNU Chess 6.3.0 for PC/GEOS / Ensemble 1.x
Native move-entry edition - English and German - 22 October 2026
==============================================================

English release 6.3.0.14; German release 6.3.0.15.
This update adds a native single-line move field below the chessboard.
It retains the 8088/8086 application target, slim engine, original icon,
shared board font, expanding board and incremental painting.

INSTALL OR UPGRADE
-----------------
1. Exit GEOS completely.
2. Choose ENGLISH/GNUCHESS.GEO or DEUTSCH/GNUCHESS.GEO.
3. Copy it as GNUCHESS.GEO into WORLD\EXTRAS, replacing the old file.
   WORLD is also supported. Remove duplicate old copies.
4. Restart GEOS and launch GNU Chess from GeoManager.

Install one language at a time: both share gnuchess.app / GnCh identity.
To change languages, exit GEOS and replace the file. No compiler, SDK,
new font, ANSIC library or system-library replacement is needed to play.
Window title: GNU Chess 6.3.0. Icon caption: GNU Chess.
The German manual is also DEUTSCH/LIESMICH.TXT in DOS CP850.

PLAY AND MOVE ENTRY
-------------------
White starts. Click a piece and then its destination. After a legal move,
GNU Chess replies automatically. Mouse promotion chooses a queen.

Alternatively, click the Move: field below the board, type e2e4, then
press Enter or select Play move. In German these controls are Eingabe:
and Zug ausfuehren. Enter submits while the move field has keyboard focus.
Use the native text control's normal cursor, selection and editing keys.
The field holds at most five characters. Append q/r/b/n for promotion,
for example e7e8q or a7a8n. These letters are the same in both languages.
Letter case is accepted in either form.

A legal move clears the field. An invalid move stays in the field so you
can correct it. The field and submit button are disabled during a search.
After Enter or Play move, focus returns to the field for your next entry.
The entry controls and mouse use the same chess validation and reply code.

New game     Start a fresh game.
Engine move  Play the side currently to move; can start White for you.
Undo turn    Undo the last human move and reply, or one standalone engine move.
Depth 1-4    Cycle requested search depth. Default remains 2.

Repeated Engine move presses let both sides play. F3 closes the application.
Games are not saved; reopening starts fresh. To uninstall, close the app
before deleting its installed geode.

DISPLAY
-------
The native entry row stays below the board when the window is resized or
maximized. The board and pieces grow together in whole-pixel square cells.
Both languages use Berkeley 10-point text in the board area and the original
FreeGEOS 48x30 knight/checkerboard application icon. No font is bundled.
Drag the window frame to resize; native old system-menu Move/Size entries
can remain gray.

Ordinary moves repaint changed squares rather than clearing the whole
board. Expose/uncover repairs the native update clip; resizing redraws
the scene. There is no application framebuffer or enlarged-piece cache.

CPU, MEMORY AND GAMEPLAY
-----------------------
The application targets the original Intel 8088 and 8086 instruction set.
Current native functional tests use the supplied English GeoWorks Pro /
Ensemble 1.2 (kernel 622.3, UI 693.0) in a dedicated DOSBox-X 8086 core,
with 640 KiB conventional memory and disk-only swapping; XMS, EMS and UMB
are disabled. Both language interfaces are tested on that English system.
This is instruction-set emulation, not physical 8088 hardware or a bus-
and cycle-accurate performance measurement. VGA 640x480 is the tested
display. Other 1.x systems and physical hardware remain unverified.

Executable reservations, rounded to 16-byte paragraphs:

                                  Previous 12/13      This 14/15
Fixed resources plus stack        127616 /127616 B    127856 /127856 B
All resources plus stack          214848 /214832 B    215280 /215280 B
Executable                        170028 /170012 B    170472 /170472 B

DGROUP stays 8400 bytes; arena 34336 bytes (34260 used after initialization);
process stack 49152 bytes. The native text control also uses GEOS object,
editing and shared-library memory. File reservations are not total physical
RAM. See EVIDENCE/move-entry for the matched runtime memory comparison,
its measurement stages and scope. The memory observer uses a separate
386-class emulator run; the 8086 native tests establish functionality.
The matched English run observed 832 bytes more app-owned memory at idle,
including 240 bytes fixed. The highest sampled allocated total was 1424
bytes above the previous idle value; usage stabilized during 20 edit/clear cycles.
Neither result establishes a minimum system-RAM requirement or a complete
transient peak. GEOS scaling can allocate its own temporary scratch.

The engine and its data are unchanged from releases 12/13. Evaluation,
search order, cache capacities, search limits, 256-entry histories and Undo
semantics are retained. This UI change does not reduce playing strength.
Depth 4 can take a long time on slow systems; select a suitable depth.

This existing port has no opening book, saved-game/PGN loading, pondering,
position editor, network protocol or search-cancel command. Tests cannot
exhaust every possible chess position.

SOURCE AND EVIDENCE
-------------------
EVIDENCE/move-entry contains the current hash-bound engine/memory audits,
native field and CPU regression tests, screenshots and memory comparison.
DEVELOPMENT contains the matching build and source-rebuild reports.
SOURCE/README-REBUILD.txt describes the SDK-free rebuild route.

EVIDENCE/cpu8086-history12-13 records the previous CPU conversion and its
larger test campaign. UI10/11, UI8/9 and slim-engine6/7 evidence/graphs are
also historical. Historical test totals and timings do not describe the
new field or physical 8088 speed. SHA256SUMS identifies package payloads.

GNU GPL version 3 or later; adapted portions retain Apache-2.0 notices.
No commercial GEOS runtime, fonts, SDK or compiler binaries are included.
