I am trying to understand what part of the xboard code is responsible
for console output. Can someone enlighten me?
The actual sending is done by SendToPlayer. This is called from
te routine read_from_ics (all in backend.c), which is a big recognizer
of the various ICS messages, and then takes action depending on the
identified message. Some messages are printed to the console,
others (such as the boards, requested move lists) are processed
without making them visible to the user as text in the console.
A difference between 4.2.7 and later versions is thet the later versions
process more messages, and then suppress them. In WinBoard
it can send some of the tell, whisper and shout messages to separate
Chat Boxes, for instance, and in that case they won't be sent to the
console. XBoard does not have chat boxes, though. When -autoKibitz is
on, opponent kibitzes are printed in the engine-ouput window, rather than
the console. When the Seek Graph is on, all seek announcements are
suppressed in the console.
I am not sure what you mean by 'more predictable'. Can yo give an example?