PilotGOne - view/record/edit GO games (SGF) in PalmOS

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Moving SGF files, Bugs, ..., Future Features, ..., Credits, PalmGOne

Moving SGF files between your PC and PalmOS® device

To make best use of the Memo Pad, it is a good idea to have all your SGF files in their own Memo Pad category – "SGF", say. This will help you to keep them separated from other memos, and will reduce sort/search times if you have many other memos.

To create a new category of Memo in the Palm™ Desktop – select Tools/ Categories/ New, and enter "SGF". You will need to do this once only.

Memos are normally copied to your Palm™ Desktop, whenever you use HotSync®.

Using Palm™ Desktop to store games "offline"

If you have many SGF records, and do not want to keep them all on the PalmOS® device at the same time, then you can use the Palm™ Desktop to achieve this efficiently.

Once only, in Palm™ Desktop, do "Tools/ Users .../ New ...", and then add a new user called "SGF Archive", say. If your normal, PalmOS® device, username is "PP User", then you can move/copy multiple Memo Pad entries between "PP User" and "SGF Archive", by using simple drag-and drop in Palm Desktop. This is much easier than moving to/from Windows itself.

Perhaps you can keep all your SGF records in "SGF Archive", and just the current ones in "PP User". You will not need to use the "SGF Archive" user in any other way.

Adding files to your PalmOS® device

To transfer SGF game records from your PC to the PalmOS® device, you have first to transfer them to the Palm™ Desktop, before doing a HotSync®. In the Palm™ Desktop, select the Memo Pad facility; make sure that you have chosen the "SGF" category at the top, then press "New...", and copy the contents of the SGF file to the window at right.

If you use Linux you can install several files simultaneously, using install-memo thus:
install-memo -c SGF /dev/pilot *.sgf
For more details, please refer to the man page for install.

There are no standard tools for moving several files simultaneously from your Windows PC to the PalmOS® device, or back. However, if you use a Windows PC (Windows 98/ ME/ 2000/ NT/ XP) then there are now tools to help you transfer multiple files in either direction (PC <–> Palm). These are SGFtoMPA, and MPAtoSGF. They were written by Martin Schmidt, but have not been tested by us. Please note that both programs work only with memos < 4Kb in size.

Removing game-records from the PalmOS® device

Obviously, you can remove single records, either from the PalmOS® device (within Memo Pad), or from the Palm™ Desktop. If you are in PilotGOne, and you want to delete the current game record, you can use Edit This Var. If you want to delete many game-records simultaneously then you might be able to do something like this:

• If this helps, first sort them into the appropriate order on your PalmOS® device.
• Do a HotSync® to get your (maybe re-ordered) memos transferred to the Desktop.
• Within your Palm™ Desktop, do a multiple Select, followed by a Delete.
• Do a HotSync® again.

There is a (freeware) tool – Mass Transit – that makes it easier to delete multiple memos. It also lets you move, simultaneously, a number of selected memos to another category – could be useful. If you are patient, Mass Transit can be downloaded from palmgear.com. Alternatively go to Mass Transit's Home Page – splatbang. Please tell us your experience.

File/memo sizes

PilotGOne will happily work with, and create, memos that are longer than the 4 kb limit that MemoPad seems to impose. It is perfectly possible to view and delete stuff from these with MemoPad, but not to extend them. For PilotGOne, there is a practical limit of 64 kb, and some files larger than 4 kb may not work properly.

The Unix tools will let you download large SGF games as one memo.

Recent versions (v3.0, and later) of the Windows Palm™ Desktop can be used automatically to split large files into 4 Kb chunks, putting a part number in the First Line of each chunk. You will need to prepare the SGF file for later use: edit the file using a text editor such as Notepad, to create a meaningful "First Line" – e.g. Insert the text "Joseki_Dictionary" on a line of its own at the beginning of the SGF file. When in the Palm Desktop, Select the "Memo" icon; make sure that the Category is "SGF"; click on "File" / "Import..."; change to the directory where the SGF file is; (probably best to select "Files of Type: Text"); now type the name of the file in the "File name" field, and then click on the "Import" button at right. This will break up the SGF file into several memos with first lines like "Joseki_Dictionary 1", "Joseki_Dictionary 2", etc.

PilotGOne will now spot when you open a game whose first line ends in " 1", " 2", etc – note the space before the "1", etc – and join the chunks back together again, although you have to have enough memory free to do this, and it is a little slow. At present, there may be problems when Hot Syncing large memos – see Ideas for future features.

Some Odds and Ends

Known "Bugs"/Limitations

• [worst bug] In Game view, opening the Options menu (or simply touching the Menu Bar!) crashes some Handspring™ handhelds (Visor and Platinum) running PalmOS® 3.5H1.2 – also seen on 3.5H1.5, and Handspring Visor Neo, running PalmOS® 3.5.2H3 (thanks to Kris J. Nuttycombe). The problem has been reported to Handspring – we are waiting for a solution. Workarounds:
  • In Listview, do Menu/ Options/ Board Preferences ... (or shortcut "/P")
  • In Board View, either use the "/P" shortcut directly, to get the board preferences, or tap "Done" to get to Listview, and then do as above.
  Please tell us if you have had this problem on other devices.
• In view mode, it displays the score unnecessarily, and incompletely, at end of game, if dead group info has previously been saved.
• Score Mode: error in counting points in some sekis, and some other positions, rarely.
• Score Mode: display of count may be truncated.
• Possible problem following change of colour to play, and then using "undo".
• When you are not at the end of the game, and you do "black play", say, and then choose the option "Replace last NN stones", then sometimes -- maybe only if you have variations -- the value of "NN" that is reported is wrong. We have reports that sometimes you are not even given a choice, even when you should be!
• Comments greater than 1024 characters are truncated.
• Some (merged) memos that are bigger than 4 kb will not Hot Sync properly.
• Limited recording, and display, of Annotations, and Marks/Labels.
• Triangle and square marks are too big for 5x5 boards.
• Although SGF (Smart Game Format) is a well-defined standard, occasionally it has been interpreted slightly differently by different programmers. This may cause problems with game records produced by other programs – e.g. there was once a problem, for PilotGOne, with some records produced by My Go Tutor. This problem has now been fixed in PilotGOne. Please report any new problems that you find.

Some things that you may consider limitations may be included in Ideas for future features.

Ideas for future features

This is a wish-list – mainly for the benefit of (potential) developers. Warning: do not get too excited – some of these may never be implemented! ... unless you do it :-)

The categories below are not completely distinct.

Rules, SGF

• Suicide ban (not illegal in all rulesets, so will be optional).
• Ko retake ban – unlikely to be implemented before 2010! :-)
• Area (Ing/Chinese) scoring.
• More intelligent scoring – mark stones dead if they can "see" other (same colour) dead stones; do not count as territory either necessary internal reinforcement (te-iri) points (especially chains with only one internal liberty), or false-eyes in seki (shared life).
• "Protect" (with "\") special characters – e.g. "." and "]" – in Game properties (as already done in Comments). Don't display "\".
• Implement creation of SGF's Nodename, and PL (change player), properties. Consider effect of, and on, black/white play, as well as undos.
• Allow the creation, and use, of empty variations – especially useful in collections of problems – e.g.
     (;GM[1]FF[4]...
     (;C[Problem 1. W to play.]AW[aa][ab][ac][AB[de][df]PL[W])
     (;C[Problem 2. B to play.]AW[aa]...AB[bc]...PL[B])
     ...)
  (Thanks to Rodney Topor)
• Forbid creation of upper case marks – they are displayed as lower-case, anyway.
• Cope with setup in root node of SGF record – emails 2001-09-04.

Ease of Use

• Allow re-map of pageUp and pageDn buttons to existing functions.
• More functions re-mappable (using soft and hard buttons).
• Allow use of graffiti area for some other functions – could dispense with stylus almost altogether?
• Extend "undo" – especially with Goto Move in view mode (requires program to remember more of what user has done).
• Skip to next comment/annotation feature.
• Improve use of Add Black, and Add White – to delete an "AddBlack", do another "AddBlack" at that point.
• Goto Move Number ... - useful when working with published game records, and/or stone was captured.

Variations

• Better handling of variations (delete, move, etc.).
• More features for working with collections of problems or games, and joseki dictionaries. Possibly (optionally) show the number (or, if SGF allows, a description) of the currently displayed problem.
• Better variation handling for game records not created by PilotGOne. (Rodney Topor 2002/07/12)
• Enable/disable Goto Begin/End Prev/Next Var if "^" and "v" gadgets are not present?
• Add the following commands to the "Goto..." panel:
  • Go to the previous position. This is defined as being the last position visited by a "Goto..." command. Not all the tree traversal commands have a simple inverse, and occasionally one wants simply to return to the last position visited.
  • To take this idea further, maintain a list of the last (max) "n" positions visited, and be able to rewind (and then go forward again!) through the list. Users are used to this with web-browsers; a similar function would suffice.
  • Go to move "n". This could be simply move number "n" in the whole game. However, a "Goto move n in this variation" command might also have some benefit!

Managing Records, Sorting and Searching

• [?] Detect newly uploaded SGF memos – optionally, automatically sort them.
• Delete game feature in PilotGOne – now need both PilotGOne and MemoPad.
• Database of player info. Reduces time/errors in entering player info. Especially useful for common/difficult names. Idea from Nishikawara Youichi, and PalmGOne.
• [?] Develop improved methods for handling memos > 4kb. These occur in heavily commented game records, joseki dictionaries and problem sets. Perhaps allow multi-memo handling (especially for memos > 64kb). This will make synchronization easier. Permit merge and un-merge of memos? Probably always keep memos < 4kb – no (re)synchronization problems. (Todd Heidenreich and Rodney Topor). Perhaps just have a better way of keeping multiple memos linked, but separate?
• Have Game Record Categories with indexed entries: remember index of last one visited in each. Helps manage records.
• Distinguish PilotGOne-created First Lines from others. Allow "Clear first lines generated by PilotGOne".
• Create SGF category (if necessary), and make it default for PilotGOne, on first load.

Editing

• Rotate display (/game record?) by 90/180/270 degrees : recorder at side of board; sharing game record with opponent; Joseki Dictionaries.
• (Mirror) reflect display (/game record?); also swap colours on display (/game record?) : Joseki Dictionaries.
• Save rotated/reflected/inverted game record, optionally. see above
• Allow auto-creation of selected default first line for all records without one yet.
• Duplicate Game Record -- make another copy of a game record – enhances SGF editing capability. Now have to use Memo Pad, with error-prone (possibly multiple) cut-and-paste. Protect original game record. Useful for problem collections.
• Delete other vars. This command would delete all variations following the most recent branch node other than the current variation. The command is useful if you have just tentatively explored several game, joseki or problem variations, returned to the main line, and wish to delete the tentative variations from the SGF memo, without having to delete them individually. This may be dangerous.
• Delete following moves. This command would delete all nodes following the current node. The command is useful in similar situations. It complements the "Delete this var" command which would delete the current and possibly previous nodes as well, which may not be desired.
• Edit first line directly from PilotGOne (done indirectly now).
• Delete This Var: display messages when user tries to use it, and it is not available.
• ? If in score mode, and user changes to any other mode, prompt to suggest "Save dead group info" first?

Other

• Auto Replay feature (with Pause and StepBack) in view mode.
• Auto-respond feature: Plays "opponent's" moves with Problem sets and Joseki Dictionaries. At present, we can (partially) mimic this in "guess" mode, if we have records of the form:
     (... setup ...;AB[...]AW[...]PL[B](;B[aa]AW[bb];B[cc]AW[dd])(;...))
  However, this does not work with normal records, and cannot cope with multiple possible White/"opponent" moves. Obviously, it also does not allow us to guess the opponent moves.
• Support for all relevant Sony Clie features.
• Add more support for colour. If you want this badly, perhaps offer to buy a colour device for one of the developers ? :-)
• Warning if PilotGOne tries to create game with Komi < 0, or Komi > 10. Currently, if negative it is set to zero.
• Warning if Handicap not zero, and Komi not either zero or 0.5.
• (Optional/Extra?) Comment mini-window!
• Gain two more spaces for gadgets -- leave out "B" and "W", just keep number of prisoners -- maybe: normal (white), and reverse video (black)
• Documentation: expandable/contractible contents list on web page.

Some Sources of SGF Files

Sorry, some of the larger SGF files will not be very useful until we have better handling of memos which are bigger than 4 Kb.

• Check out Harry Fearnley's Go/Baduk/WeiQi Bookmarks/Favourites – in the section "Go: Sources of Game Records - SGF, UGZ, ...".
• A useful list of SGF collections on Ken Warkentyne's page (when it is available) – note especially Takemiya games.
• Go Games On Disk collections – GoGoD – may be bought via het Paard and Yutopian.
• GoBase has lots of professional games.
• Go Teaching Ladder -- commented games.
• A collection of Classical Go problems from Ulrich Goertz – these may need to be split.
• Kogo Joseki collection – a single, approx 400 kb, SGF file – will need to be split ... If you do this, then please tell us.
• Games played on the IGS – look in the Archives.
• Use FTP to Download a compressed (Unix) "shell" archive of Fotland's Joseki dictionary, which has deeply buried within it a number of files (sizes are: 91.5, 83.3, 81.7, 12.4, 1.8 kb), some of which will need to be split before they can be used. You will need a tool that copes with ZIP files, to get at the contents.

PilotGOne Mailing lists

• pilotgone-announce: pilotgone palmos go recorder announcements
• pilotgone-user: pilotgone palmos go recorder user discussion
• pilotgone-dev: pilotgone palmos go recorder developer discussion

As messages are sent they will be added to an archive of posted messages. Anyone can read the archived messages – you do not have to be a subscriber to a list to do so.

These mailing lists use EZMLM (EZ Mailing List Manager). To find out what this offers you, check out the documentation of the EZMLM/IDX MAILING LIST MANAGER, or if this does not work, then a duplicate copy of the EZMAN-0.32: EZMLM/IDX USER'S MANUAL

Using ZIP Files

There are many programs that can unpack "ZIP" files. You may want to use one of these:

• Info-ZIP – free; multi-platform – a liberal license.
• WinACE – sponsored Freeware (also a commercial version).
• WinZIP – free time-limited demoware, and a commercial product.

Splitting Files

There are many tools, available on host computers (especially PCs), for splitting files into smaller pieces. Perhaps find a freeware, or shareware, tool that suits you (not many features needed) by searching for "file split" at TUCOWS, or even cast the net wider by searching with Google, or your favourite search-engine. Maybe look for "split60i.zip" or "chop31.zip".

How can you help?

An easy way of helping might be to share in the discussion on one of the PilotGOne Mailing lists, especially the pilotgone-dev mailing list.

If you are a programmer, who is happy (to start) working in the very good development environment SDK 4.0 (supplied free by Palm), then check out the Ideas for future features to find a problem to solve, and then look at the sources that are freely available – maybe check with the pilotgone-dev mailing list, in case someone else is already working on it?

We are also looking for some general tools – for PalmOS® and/or Windows. Some things that would be helpful are:

• Creating a First Line from the filename on the host computer. This is already possible with the Linux tool. It would be helpful to have something for a PC and/or a Mac. Ideally this would be a free-standing executable, but a Perl script could be useful.

PilotGOne Team – Credits

A number of people have been involved in various ways in bringing PilotGOne to its present state.

1998 - today: Brian Brunswick – the originator. In 1998 he worked on the first versions alone. He is still actively involved in the development, and is also responsible for running the web site and the mailing lists.

early 2000 - today: Sylvain Soliman: coding (first published in Nov 2000); co-ordinating function; beta-testing.

late 2000 - today: Harry Fearnley: documentation (first published April 2001); beta testing.

In early 2001, PilotGOne was placed under the Gnu GPL licence. Later in 2001, some mailing lists were created for PilotGOne users, and (potential) developers, to share ideas.

Throughout the years, a number of people have kindly reported problems that they found with PilotGOne – sometimes they have done extensive tests. Others have written with suggestions for additions, and improvements that they would like to see -- some of these have been very detailed specifications. Since early 2001, several others have helped with Beta testing, or have contributed specific bits of code. Sometimes, these people have been mentioned, by name, in the "Change History", sometimes not – sorry!

Individual contributors include (in alphabetical order of family name):
Joerg Abendroth, Tomas Brauer, Pascal Cuoq, Damien Doligez, Bob Felice, Jean-Loup Gailly, Todd Heidenrich, Peter Hoehe, Tobias Klaus, Burkhard Landskron, Nishikawara Youichi ( PalmGOne developer), Sebastian Strollo, Dan Stromberg, Steve Taylor, Mikael Thulin, Rodney Topor, Kenneth Yeon, and "The Nose who Knows".

Please let us know of any omissions.

We have also used the free tools: Palm Inc's PalmOS Software Development Kit, and PalmOS Emulator (POSE) -- especially for the screenshots; Xenu Link Sleuth to check the links in the web pages; gifsicle to create the animated GIF image; and JASC Software's shareware version 3.11 of Paint Shop Pro, for compressing the screenshot images, and converting from BMP to GIF and PNG format.

Development Platforms

Currently we use: Palm Pilot Professional, Palm IIIe, Handspring Visor Prism, Handspring Platinum, Sony Clie N770C (Japanese).

PalmGOne – Japanese Version

There is a Japanese variant of an earlier version (0.7.0?) of PilotGOne. It is called PalmGOne, and there is an associated eGroups Discussion Group – igo-palm – in Japanese. Many thanks to Nishikawara Youichi for this version. There is also a beta version -- probably based on PilotGOne 0.8.0.

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