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|| There's me for one. 

| The keyword in this phrase is 'one'... :-)

I can only speak for myself, but I doubt I'm alone.

| If there are other programs with graphics that you like better, then I 
| could only win you over by providing similar graphics.

No, that doesn't follow. You could win me over by providing better graphics. Besides, all I want is the ability for me to provide you with better graphics. I am not asking you to provide any additional graphics. I have the graphics. I want the ability to use them with Winboard.

| That would be a total waste of time, as I would be making something that 
| apparently exists already.

No, it would not be a waste of time at all. The only programs with the kind of graphics capability I want are Zillions of Games and a couple Chinese Chess programs with customizable graphics. Everything else comes up short, even ChessV, because it doesn't use images for boards.

|| I have a good Shogi program that came in a commercial suite that also 
|| includes Chess and Xiangqi, though I prefer other programs for those 
|| games, such as Chessmaster and Coffee Chinese Chess.

| Well, nice for you. Just play the Kamikze Mortal Shogi with that one, 
| then.

That is not an option. It is a commercial program that only plays Shogi and does not include any graphics for the Kamikaze piece.

|| Anyway, resizing boards is not as important as just allowing bitmap 
|| images to be used for boards and pieces. It makes a difference only 
|| for large variants that don't easily fit on the screen. 

| Well, it doe to me, and many like me: a I have a dual-core PC I play two
| games simultaneously, and would like to fit both WinBoard displays next 
| to each other, together with the control windows of the corresponding two
| tournament managers. And soon I will have a quad (or, when I get my way,
| even an octal core or dual quad)...

Since Winboard already supports fonts, you do have the option of using fonts instead of rescaled bitmaps. Adding a new feature to your program does not force you to use it. And if you added the feature, you could avoid the need to rescale altogether by creating some smaller bitmap pieces.

| Using the same image for the promoted and unpromoted piece is just bad 
| design of the piece set.

That depends on the set. I would not use the same images for a Japanese set, and my Symbolic set uses different images, but the set I based on the Chess Motif font uses standard Chess piece images, and it makes sense for this set to just change the color for the promoted pieces.

| By the same token you could represent all Chess pieces by
| Pawns, and then complain how essential it is to have their heas rendered
| in all different colors to distinguish a Knight from a Queen...

No, what works well in moderation does not always work well when taken to an extreme.

| The built-in winBoard representation does not suffer from this. Promoted
| pieces are clearly distinct from the unpromoted versions there. They look
| like the piece they promote to, while stil betraying their origin.

I would not know if this is true, because Winboard would not let me make a single move when I tried to use it for Shogi.