Go Grinder/ Discussion

Praises and Elation

LoP: Interesting program similar to UliGo

Shaydwyrm: I'm very happy to see that this program doesn't share UliGo's dependence on the sgf "collection" format, since I much prefer to have my problems in separate files (they are also more often available as separate files).

PatrickB: 'cat prob???.sgf >> prob-collection.sgf'

RueLue: This is the method to get one collection file out of several single-problem files. The other way (split) can be done with GoGrinder itself!

Velobici: This program is wonderful! It flips, and rotates problems automatically so that they appear in multiple orientations. It automatically advances through a directory containing numbered problems (e.g. prob001.sgf). The graphics are quite nice, very pleasing to the eye. I have been looking, for something like this. Thank you very much!

AshleyF: I love the tagging system! I like the mixture of collections as directories of problems and then tags on top of that; being able to tag whole collections, etc. Very cool! Now I need to figure out how you're storing the tag info (various .dat files in GoGrinder\stats?) and make it interoperate with Go Album tags.

kritz: works well with the 900+ sample problems from madlab

Ectospheno: I think this program is awesome. I wish I had found it earlier. Thanks and keep up the good work.

Problems and Solutions

Shortcut for forth/back in the collection [solved]
Anon: Is it possible to assign a function key to the "next" and "previous" buttons?

TimK: You can use Z and X or , and . to go to the next and previous problems.

So slow on my machine [solved]
uxs: It looks nice, but it's very, very slow for me. When I start the program, the first few moves I try are ok, but after that each stone can take like 3 seconds for the program to process. It's not usable for me like this, which is too bad.

TimK: uxs - What OS, and system (processor, ram) are you running on? Is anyone else seeing this sluggishness?

uxs: This was on my PC at work, running Win2k?. On my home PC, on WinXP, I didn't have the problem. Home system specs: Athlon XP 2000+, 1GB Ram, yadda yadda. Work system: Win2K Pro. Intel P4, 1.6 Ghz, 640MB ram. Java build 1.4.2_01-b06. If you need other details, let me know.

TimK: That machine should be powerful enough. One thing you might want to look at is how much memory is free when you see the problem - See how much Physical Memory is available in the Task Manager under Performance.

uxs: I found the problem. I checked the process information of the program and I noticed that after 1 try, the number in the "I/O: other" column (this is one of the columns that you have to enable yourself) kept increasing. Another try, and the number became even higher. At this point the program also becomes sluggish. Now it seems that this specific I/O column indicates that there's information being sent to, probably among other things, the sound system: when I disabled the sounds in the program, the sluggish performance dissappeared completely. I thought about the sound system this quickly because I've had problems with sounds before, mp3's for example are impossible for me to play... So you can consider this problem solved. You may delete this entire conversation if you wish, and maybe put something about it in the documentation or whatever you want to do. Thanks for the help.

Grinder cannot find the problem directory. [solved]
ZeroKun: I tried it on my debian system and it couldn't find the problem directory.

TimK: ZeroKun, you have to make sure that the Java VM is started in the directory above the problem directory. One way to do this is to go to that directory at the command line, and execute the command: java -jar gogrinder.jar Does that work?

ZeroKun: Yes that works, I think you should state that on the site for people who have jars associated in their desktop manager.

RueLue: The starter should look like this:

cd /home/kalleb/Programme/GoGrinder
java -Dsun.sound.useNewAudioEngine="false" -jar GoGrinder.jar

'-Dsun.sound.useNewAudioEngine="false" ' is new (2012) and works only with Java 1.6 . It is needed for the sounds as with one of the last updates Oracle changed the code for playing .wav-files.

Add problems to the Grinder collection [solved]
Question from a computer illiterate: I am trying to create some folders of problems to use with GoGrinder. I create a bunch of .sgf files containing problems in a folder. I open GoGrinder, click on "Open File," go to my folder of problems, and it appears to be completely empty, It only seems to recognize "GoGrinder State Files (*ggs)." I don't know what this file format is and can't find any information on it. Is there a way to get GoGrinder to look at my problems in .sgf format? Thanks

Where ever GoGrinder is installed, there will be a sub-folder called problems, it's problem collections need to be here. Create a folder inside this for your new problem collection, put your problems into this folder, they should be 1 problem per file in sgf format. Now load GoGrinder, Use the Select Problems (Magnifying Glass) tool, to navigate to and select your new problem collection. Bingo!