Goban

Introduction

The Goban plugin is a viewer and editor for Smart Game Format (SGF) files containing Go games. Go is also known as 囲碁 (Igo), 围棋 (Weiqi), 바둑 (Baduk) and Goe. The plugin also, of course, functions as a board for two people to play Go on.

Getting Started

To create a new SGF file or to play go with a friend, simply start the Goban plugin from the Plugins menu. Loading existing SGF files can be accomplished by selecting them in the File Browser (the plugin is registered as a viewer for .sgf files).

SGF File Support

SGF files of File Format 3 and 4 will generally work. Almost all SGF files you will find are of one of these formats. The SGF Specification can be found at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/ . A syntax checker for SGF files is also available there. The Goban plugin does not support the full range of SGF property types, but--in general--any that are not handled are preserved from loading to saving. That said, it is recommended that you make backups of your SGF files before editing them in the Goban plugin.

These are some specific caveats that you should know about:

• Game collection SGF files are not supported and if you save them, the plugin will quietly discard every game except for the first one. These SGF files are quite rare, however (not many SGF readers support them). This does not mean that game variations are not supported; they are.
• Labels on board points longer than one character are not supported and will be truncated (they are not preserved even in the SGF file).
• If you edit extremely long comments in a game, they will be truncated.

Popular SGF Files

Some popular SGF files that are known to work with the Goban plugin:

• Kogo's Joseki Dictionary works well, but loading and saving can take up to a minute on slow devices.
• Arno's Fuseki Database works except that the comments are not visible without some work. If you would like to see the comments, open the .sgf file in a text editor first and replace every instance of "N[" with "C[", except for the one instance of "GN[" near the top of the file. They will then work perfectly in the Goban plugin.
• Files from the KGS Go Server.
• Games from the Internet Go Server.
• Professional games and other files from Gobase.

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CategoryPlugin: Go SGF Editor [H100, H300, H10, iPod 1G2G, iPod 4G, iPod Color, iPod Mini, iPod Nano, iPod Video, iAudio M5, iAudio X5, Gigabeat, Sansa e200, Sansa c200, Sansa Fuze, MR-100]