This section documents the command-line options to XBoard. You can set these options in two ways: by typing them on the shell command line you use to start XBoard, or by editing the settings file (usually ~/.xboardrc) to alter the value of the setting that was saved there. Some of the options cannot be changed while XBoard is running; others set the initial state of items that can be changed with the Options menu.
Most of the options have both a long name and a short name. To turn a boolean option on or off from the command line, either give its long name followed by the value true or false (‘-longOptionName true’), or give just the short name to turn the option on (‘-opt’), or the short name preceded by ‘x’ to turn the option off (‘-xopt’). For options that take strings or numbers as values, you can use the long or short option names interchangeably.