MacFIBS won't launch in Mac OS System 7.x.
Users on older systems may receive an error message: "The application MacFIBS 4.5.3 could not be opened because 'Unicode Converter'could not be found." In this situation I suggest you download MacFIBS 3, which is fully functional and works well on older systems.
Gag and Blind don't work for players who log in after you.
In MacFIBS, gag and blind commands should be "sticky" (they remain in effect until you ungag or unblind a player.) When a player logs in whom you have gagged or blinded, MacFIBS should automatically issue the appropriate command. This is not happening properly; MacFIBS gags/blinds players who are online when you log in, but it doesn't handle players who log in after you. Thanks to CokeBear for reporting this.
MacFIBS plays the "HELLO!" sound when you are invited to play a match. If MacFIBS is not the frontmost application, the sound will not play until you bring MacFIBS to the front. The sound should play at the time of invitation. This bug may also be present in 4.5.1. Thanks to Kevin Furuta for identifying this bug.
Gag and Blind settings don't "stick".
Normally if you gag or blind another player, it remains in effect even if you or the player logs out. I was in the middle of rewriting the logic for this when I had to release these beta versions to address the server crisis (Northpoint bankruptcy).
There is no work around for this bug, but it will be fixed in the next release of MacFIBS.
MacFIBS crashes when you quit if "Connect Immediately" preference is selected.
To avoid this problem, make sure you have the "Display Connect dialog" preference choice set in the Startup section in the Preferences window.
MacFIBS crashes if you receive an invitation, double offer, or resign offer while you are choosing a new board.
This is caused by a bug in the Mac OS Navigation Services Open... dialog code.
The "Show Higher Dice First" option doesn't always work correctly.
This preference setting should enable MacFIBS to display the higher dice first (e.g. 6-4 rather than 4-6). If you enable this option the dice may appear in opposite order, with the lower dice first. You can fix this by going to the Terminal window and typing 'toggle moreboards' to set the moreboards flag to YES. You should only need to set this toggle once.
The scroll bar on the Game History window doesn't work, so you can't scroll back to see earlier rolls and moves. You can save the text to a file and examine it in SimpleText or other text editor.
The "Use Keychain" checkbox in the Network section of the Preferences window is disabled. The reason is simple: "Use Keychain" is not implemented yet. At some point I will add this, allowing you to store your MacFIBS user name and password in your Keychain.
This appears to be caused by changes to the sound playing algorithms, if you are experiencing this problem and the slower play is not acceptable to you, you can turn games sounds off in the Preferences dialog.
If you are playing a match and drag one of your opponent's checker rather than your own, the board will do strange things. You can fix this by refreshing the board (Cmd-B).
If you invite a player by opening the "Invite <player>" window, and then change your mind and close the window with Cmd-W without sending the invitation, the Close command for the underlying window is not enabled. You can bring another window to the front and then back to the underlying window to work around this bug.
While watching a match, if one player doubles the other, the doubling cube will be moved to the top center of the board to indicate the offer. It should be on the top if the bottom player makes the offer, and on the bottom if the top player makes the offer (this is the behavior you should see when playing.) Once the player has accepted the doubling cube, it will appear in the proper place in the top or bottom tray.
If players resume a match in progress, the match score in the Matches tab of the Player window will show incorrect numbers, for example "53 (-1--1)"
If you choose "Help" from a contextual menu, MacFIBS opens the "About MacFIBS Guide" file instead of the newer Apple Help documentation (Mac OS 8.5 or later). The "About MacFIBS Guide " Apple Guide file is out of date and has been replaced by the HTML based Apple Help documentation. The Apple Guide file is required only as a "placeholder" for the help system to locate the Apple Help documentation.
If you delete or move the "About MacFIBS Guide" file, choosing "Help" from a contextual menu will cause MacFIBS to quit.
This bug is best described by example: With one checker remaining on the two point, you roll 4-1, move the checker to the tray (2/off), and click the dice to make the move. FIBS complains that you haven't made two moves and doesn't accept your move. You must move 2/1, 1/off; you cannot just bear off your last checker in one move.
This is actually a server bug; although a careful reading of the rules of backgammon allows you to finish the game with just one move, the server requires you to make two moves in the manner described. It believes you can (and must) make two moves, and won't accept anything less.
While I could put logic into MacFIBS to silently convert this special case into a move message that makes the server happy, I haven't. I do hear about this periodically from users who encounter it, so perhaps someday I'll get around to it.
Although there is a close box on Invitation windows (those that appear when another player invites you to play a match) you can't close the window with the Close command (Cmd-W). You will actually close one of the inactive windows behind the Invitation window.
If you do not want to accept or reply to an invitation, you should click the Invitation window's close box to dismiss the window.
I'm not sure the conditions around this, but it appears that if you edit a player who isn't currently logged in, your changes or notes aren't always saved.
This bug will prevent you from saving files with Mac line endings, all files will be saved with DOS line endings.
When you play a match, the lower player icon representing yourself is grayed out, and you can't double click it or drag it to the match calculator or a player info window.
This bug was introduced when I fixed the "You" bug recently (see below), and will be fixed in the next release. For now, if you want to get information about yourself or use the match calculator, you can drag your name from the player window.
In "FIBS English", many messages use "You" in place of your own user name (e.g. "You roll 1 6" actually means "fergy rolls 1 6"). When someone recently registered the user name "You", all hell broke loose. MacFIBS treats "You" as a "you"phemism (hee hee...) for your user name, and this caused all sorts of problems when "You" was logged in.
In rare situations, you may see a version of 1.1 instead of 4.1.6 when viewing client information for a player (possibly yourself). MacFIBS is picking up the version of the board file rather than the version of the application, and this occurs if you open a new board file just before connecting. The bug is cosmetic only, it does not affect MacFIBS behavior.
If you use the Refresh Players command (Cmd-E) in the Players window, players who are gagged or blinded will be ungagged or unblinded and the settings you saved for these players will be lost (data corruption). This only affects marked players who are logged in when you issue the Refresh Players command, it does not affect any players who are not logged in.
Because MacFIBS maintains very accurate player information, there is little need to use the Refresh Players command; this command is a vestige from earlier versions of MacFIBS that did not use the CLIP protocol. I recommend avoiding this command if you have gagged or blinded players.
When you resign a match, the radio buttons function properly, but the previous choice is not cleared. For example, if you want to resign a gammon rather than a single game, when you click the Resign Gammon (2x) button, botht the Gammon (2x) and the Normal (1x) button will appear checked. If you click the Resign button, a "resign gammon" message will be sent in the example, so the dialog functions properly.
The new sort options to be able to sort in ascending or descending order have the side effect of not providing views similar to the previous version. For example, in earlier versions you could sort by rating, then click the status button to see all the Ready players in descending rating order. In the new version, you can only view them in ascending order.
The Sort By submenu provides an alternate way to sort the player list, but appears to be broken. You should click the column headers in the player list instead.
When you save a game to file, the final message "score in 3 point match ..." is not included in the file; the last message will be "X: wins" or "O: wins".
Executing the 'dicetest' command in the Terminal window will cause MacFIBS to crash. Don't do that.
No startup Terminal window causes CRASH!
In the Preferences, you can select which windows to open at startup. If you do not have the Terminal window selected, when you log in, MacFIBS will crash. Note that this problem doesn't occur if you close the Terminal window after MacFIBS has started up--the window still exists, but is just hidden until you reopen it in the Windows menu.
If a player leaves you a message, their user name will be added to the Player window, even if that player isn't logged in when you log in and receive the message.
The default setting of the Resign dialog is incorrectly set to Backgammon (3x), although internally, the default is set to Normal (1x). If you click either Normal (1x) or Gammon (2x), the internal state and the radio buttons in the dialog will get in sync. If you want to resign a backgammon, you can then reselect Backgammon (3x).
The numbers on the board sometimes do not appear (or appear for a while and then disappear), even when "Show Pip Numbers" is set in your Preferences. You can fix this by closing and reopening the board, or by changing your left/right home preference.
If you turn board sounds off in the Preferences, then later turn them back on, the sounds will not play. If you quit MacFIBS and restart, the sounds should then play properly.