Friday, August 25, 2006

More Power Needs More Discipline

The more powerful databasing tools arrive on the Go scene, the more adherence to proper SGF standards is required from those who edit Go games or Go problems. Moyo Go is able to find all commented games in its databases, but a search for the SGF property C[ won't work, due to the unfortunate circumstance that properties such as PC[ (place) will trigger a search hit.

The AN[ property offers solace: It mentions the author of the comments (the "annotator").

The images show two ways of searching for all commented games with Go Seigen.

This will only work if games adhere to proper SGF standards. I can't stress enough how important it is to stick to standards! As it is today, almost none of the SGF out there truly qualifies. Let's all clean up the existing mess and make sure we use standards-compliant Go software and, at least as important - let's follow those standards ;-)