KGSWishlist/Editing

Sub-page of KGSWishlist

14. Editing games (online, offline)

Preface

Here we collect ideas for improvements and feature requests concerning the KGS game editing features. That are online: demonstrations, reviews or teaching games and offline: game file editing.

If you are new to KGS:

If you just used KGS for the first time, these wishlist pages may be quite confusing to you. Your experience, however, is very valuable and you can help to improve KGS by adding it to KGS First Time User Experience.

Table of contents


Unsorted ideas and requests

Editor: Ability to reset the number or label sequence

  • slade: In the label or number tool it would be useful if you could ctrl+shift+click and start the sequence back from '1' in the case of numbers and 'A' in the case of labels. There have been many times in teaching games where you will want to count points or liberties in multiple areas and the only work around involves using the label tool and shift clicking for every intersection.

Editor: set white/black/remove stones with mouse only

  • savra?: I think it is useful if it would possible to set white stones in the edit tool with the right mouse button instead of pressing shift + left mouse button. Or (maybe better) after clicking on a black stone switch the mode to set white stones and clicking on a white stone switches to set black stones. This is useful if you only have one hand free, for example because you hold a book. +
    • (Sebastian:) The second wouldn't work because this is the way to remove stones - which should remain. But you could implement the same logic I use in Miniban: Clicking on a black stone removes it. Clicking at the same spot again toggles to entering white stones. This has the advantage that you don't need to click on the menu when you set up a position. +
      • Karl Knechtel: I like that from a power-user perspective, but it seems difficult to explain - it won't confuse the user when triggered accidentally, but it's difficult to stumble upon purposefully.

Lesson: some way to easily refer to a prior board position; list of observers with questions

deg: I would like to see some kind of improvement in the way people can ask a lecturer a question during a lecture. At the moment, questions are generally of the form 'what if a1 at b2?' Misunderstandings can easily occur, especially if the lecturer's first language is not English. Confusion can also arise over the context of the question. I think what is needed is some way to easily refer to a prior board position. To this end, to try to reduce ambiguity, and to filter specific questions from general chat, I suggest:

  • Some kind of board clone window that you can use to send the lecturer a board that contains your question. The position leading up to your question could be reduced to a simple board 'set-up'.
  • Or: Some kind of 'ask' button that brings up a form that you fill in containing 'move number', 'variation' and 'new move(s)' fields. Variations would need to be numbered - maybe have a tooltip that appears over a move in the game tree window, that would contain '53/3' when you move the mouse over move 53 (the third variation).
  • And/or: As well as a window containing the names of the viewers of a game, have a window showing people who have a question they want to ask. The lecturer clicks on a name, and gets their question in some form.

Editor, offline: "mark moves" option (circles) set to "on" by default

  • Steve: I would prefer it if the "mark moves" option (which circles the last move) was set on by default when I open a SGF for local viewing.

Editor: generate variations of a move by right-clicking, ghost stones for variations

  • axd: generate variations of a move by right-clicking (as in Jago): sometimes I want to decide first on the options, then explore them; now, I need to go back and see if more options can be played (or, alternatively, place a stone, come back, place another stone, come back, etc). Ghost stones (brothers of the current move, already proposed in this page) would also be nice, because I always need to enter into a variation to see where it is.

Editor: set white stone with the right mouse button

  • LithiumTwo: It'd be nice to edit in a white stone with the right mouse button, rather than holding shift and clicking the left. (I would also like to see this feature in the demonstration mode of KGS ; left mouse click to put a black stone and a right mouse click for a white stone or vica versa)
    • Slade: This is would be great for when using the edit tool. There have been times when I am holding up a book and copying a position from it and I really don't have my hand free to hold down the shift button. I've notice an odd behavior though. When using the edit tool editing an offline game you can use caps lock to switch over to white. However this behavior doesn't reflect itself into the online demo mode. While right-click would be great I'd be satisfied with the ability to use caps locks in online demos/teaching games.

Editing: better indication of change of edit control

  • During editing, after editing control is released, could there be an prominent icon to indicate that the other player can now politely take control of the game editing. +

Navigate by keyboard, keyboard focus, too often mouse needed

  • Would you PLEASE add a key binding that no matter where you think the focus is this key binding will put focus such that using the arrow keys will navigate through the moves of the game. This is VERY useful for editing games in two cases. The first is when I'm editing text, and I want to change to another move (the arrow keys obviously in this case move in the text). The second case is when the client intermittently loses the arrow key bindings for navigation in the game tree. The key thing here is to avoid having to use the mouse as much as possible (only requiring it for actually adding stones or markers). Without this new key binding, you're pretty much forced to be VERY mouse-oriented which is very annoying.

No extra key for setup of a position

  • Droste: One-Button-No-Extra-Key-Editing: To be able to hold a book in one hand and edit a SGF-File with the other, I propose some changes:
    • edit tool: click on black changes it to white, click on white deletes stone
    • clicking on edit tool in menu, while selected: reverses white and black as above
    • clicking on move tool in menu, while selected: changes whoes move it is
    • LithiumTwo: I would prefer if right-clicking put down a white stone, if you had to click twice to get a white stone you'd be there setting up the game forever (as demonstration games/reviews are usually extremely laggy if you're the one setting it up)
    • jasper?: It would help if clicking while caps lock is on counted as shift-click. Otherwise you need three hands.

Documentation: navigate between variations, edit games

  • Grauniad: Document how to navigate between variations and edit games in CGoban 2.6.3 and beyond.

Allow giving away ownership of a review; allow quick marks without control

  • Allow giving away ownership or control of a demo (including review), so a starter can leave. ++++++
    • In addition, have the game initiator share control rather than simply transferring it. This would allow the teacher to make a quick mark (maybe in red) while somebody else has control without having to take control back. impu1se

Display of current move number and move

  • Display of current move number and move you are looking at. [This is how it is now, is it not?]...
    • LithiumTwo: this is current?
      • RueLue (v.3.4.5): After the result is declared, the move number is not any more shown. This is annoying!

Edit window as permanent part of the main board window

  • Edit window to become a permanent part of the main board window, switching back and forth is cumbersome. Dockable? Pop it up paired with the game board to second from the top? +++?++
    • LithiumTwo: we've got this now, haven't we?
    • Alternately, a way to visualize moves in the tree without deploying the edit window (e.g. display the current branch and a list of the coordinates of the child branch moves, or perhaps ghosted stones like gGo). It would be nice to be able to disable the "look ahead" for working on problems.
  • KBunny I like it; give some of the egregious comment space to the "F1" through "paste", and throw in a dozen of the most frequently used short-cut keys from [ext] http://www.gokgs.com/help/faq/shortcuts.html . Also, it's causing me to squint looking at my opponents name spelled out on gray background with White or Black Go stones; "almost" a Captcha.

Layout of the edit window

  • Change the layout of the edit window to make it less tall, but maybe wider. Right now, fitting both game and edit window onto the screen (without overlap) is a bit of a squeeze. Maybe also offer two different edit window layouts, one vertical and one horizontal that users can choose from.

Have undos delete moves, at least in demonstration mode

  • Have undos delete moves, at least in demonstration mode. +++-++
    • Malluin would be great to be able to cut or delete a branch of demonstration game tree !!! Would be useful in order to correct mistakes of kifu recording or correct teacher errors for example. (other things like node text editing would be nice too). ++?+
      • I might be dreaming, but wasn't it possible to do this a few versions back? Anyway - it's really needed.
      • impu1se: Seems like it's already possible when editing an sgf file offline but not during demo games. Is this because observers could be viewing a different game branch?

Don't save without asking modifications of demonstrations games

  • malluin Don't save without asking modifications of demonstrations games !!

When saving SGF, add sequential numbers for all comments

  • When saving SGF, add sequential numbers for all comments so they can be made sense of (followed through the file?), store comments with the move where typing started, not where the user hit enter. [This would seem to require extending the SGF format. It is unlikely all interested parties would agree.]

Possible to clean up all comments from the game (WORKAROUND)

  • Being able to clean up all comments from the game. This is especially useful for further reviewing (submitting to GTL, for example), or when one wishes to look at high dan game w/o all the noise. Similar functionality as [ext] http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/sgfc/ +
    • tapir: MulitGo? will help you.

Make undos a variation rather than the main line

  • Another version of cleaning up final SGF: consolidate entire game to get rid of all undos and make one continuous string of moves. ++++
    • At least make undos a variation rather than the main line (as they are today) in the SGF +++++?+
    • wms: The variations are all in chronological order. Undos are first because they happened first. I don't plan on changing that, more likely would be changing the editor to detect undos and automatically make the second variation the default one.
      • dnerra: Please note that the way you are doing it is incompatible with the "official style guide" for SGF. See first paragraph in [ext] http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/user_guide/#style. I don't think it is reasonable to expect SGF readers to automatically detect undo's, given this clear recommendation.

Game tree: put the main line on top, decide by length of branch

  • game tree Please put the main line on top. When drawing the tree, at every node with more than one child, sort the children by length. If the longest child is always on top, the main line will always be on top. Thanks. -meditation-
    • SirLyric: Not always the case. Consider a game where after 100 moves Black resigns on the main line ("what actually happened") but a variation goes on for another ten or twenty showing why Black didn't keep playing. You'd see the variation on top and not end up following the real game line.
    • Phelan: SirLyric is right, but I'd also like a way to avoid having undoed moves on top of the main line of play, for games played on KGS. I think that apart from Demo/Teaching games or reviews, meditation's suggestion might work, since the main line will always be longer than the variations caused by the undos.
    • Ansgar?: The mainline is not always the longest child. Think of a variation near the end of the game which could easily be longer than the original game. The correct solution would be to make undos in the game a variation instead of the main line (see wish above this one)
    • impu1se: Just like to note that you can already move branches around when using the offline sgf editing. Under the Tool menu use "shift up" and "shift down".

A mode to step through game and variations in succession of the appearence of the moves and comments

  • Yet another suggestion for cleaning up the SGF: add a mode that steps through the game (including variations) as was done during the game. I.e. if a teacher started on the main branch with moves 1,2,3 and then jumped to another branch with move 4(a) and 5(a), then came back to main branch move 4, allow the user to automatically traverse the game through moves 1,2,3,4a,5a,4 without the user needing to work out the timings of the thing by looking at the comments.
    • wms: This is not possible with SGF as it stands. This belongs more in the SGF Wishlist I think.
    • Sebastian: Actually, this is possible with SGF because SGF explicitly allows the introduction of new properties. However, it doesn't even have to be done using SGF. I proposed a feature earlier to include sequential numbers in the comment text itself to clean up the current confusion with text that has been added during review of the game. (This was something like "{#123}". Unfortunately, that wish seems to have been lost during major rewrites.)

FF[4]: area, line, and arrow modes in CGoban

  • Full FF[4] capabilities in the editor; area, line, and arrow modes added to the edit window (or the conjoined docked editing box). For an example of what this looks like see http://jeanfrancois.menon.free.fr/rubygo/screenshots.html and go halfway down the page til you see the screen where these tools are used. +++-

Markup, that allows to make a clickable link to SL.

  • Integration with SL: markup (such as [[ and ]]) that would allow making a clickable link to SL.

Include game type in the SGF file

  • Include game type (Free/Rated/etc.) in the SGF file, even if just as part of a comment entry.++

Include game info in the SGF file

  • RueLue: Include the game info from the game setup window in the SGF file.

Ability to change the orientation of the board display

  • Ability to change between the 8 possible orientations of a game to help compare openings. (Four rotations multiplied by a reflection of each make eight. 16 if you count reversed Black and White, as would be useful.)+-
    • LithiumTwo: if you are searching a database, the facility most probably automatically does this (as is the case with [ext] http://gobase.org). Otherwise, why can't you just do this with your brain, if spinning the board around is really required?

Ability to rotate the board in the middle of a game

  • Ability to rotate the board in the middle of a game. +

Ability to exchange black and white

  • Hu: Ability to Exchange Black and White, useful for joseki study.+-

Possible to turn the "number moves" feature on for a whole branch

  • Possibility to turn the "number moves" feature on for whole branches of a sgf-file. (with or without all subbranches, from a node along the active game branch etc.)

Expand and reduce variation-branches (explorer like)

  • Expand and reduce variation-branches (explorer like: with a small "+" or "-" in front of each node with brach connections.)

Cut or copy a branch from one file to another

  • Additional cut and paste feature: cut or copy a branch from one file and put it into another open SGF file (clipboard).
    • impu1se: I've run into a couple of situations where this would have been useful. At least adding the copy ability to fill out the cut/paste feature would be nice.

Copy part of a board to make a Go problem out of it

  • Additional cut and paste feature: a possibility to copy part of a board. Mark several stones or mark a specific area of the board, nice for the preparation of Go problems from games.

Game tree presentation (more compact mode)

  • Fwiffo: Option to make the stones in the game tree window smaller so the tree can be more compact and fit more moves and branches on the screen. +

Review: ask every spectator to save the game

  • After a game has been reviewed, allow every spectator to save the game, not only the reviewer. Reviewers mostly quit without saving the game in their profile - such a review has most value to watchers. One should consider an option to let reviewer disallow(?) saving the review.
    • RueLue: "let reviewer disallow saving the review" (?) - automatically save a review in the reviewers games list!

Editor: recursively make branch the main line

  • 'Up' currently only possible for node's direct childs. Allow 'Up' anywhere: implement by recursively applying the 'Up' action to the node (if any) of the current (sub)branch of the selected move. +

Cycle through the variant moves easily

  • os: Right now it is painful to view a joseki/fuseki dictionary with many alternatives per move, because one must go back-down-forward to even see what each alternative move is. It would be nice to (1) be able to cycle through the variant moves at some point easily (PilotGOne does this nicely - grauniad), (2) to see the variant moves available on the board (e.g., as transparent stones as the PANDA-gGo client does it: [ext] http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/setup/PANDA-gGo.htm). (1) could be achieved by making the up/down keys move between variations; i.e., move up/down in the variation tree as it is displayed. This is natural, because up/down move the cursor in the variation tree just like the left/right keys do (and easier to understand than the highlighting change that happens currently). It is a bit stronger than the preceding proposal, because it would always select a different variation at a preceding node, even if the current node had branches. In fact, it would do away with the need to highlight a variation (the principal variation can be defined to be the topmost one and edited in this way).

Confusion with keyboard arrow keys

  • small suggestion: instead of (during observe)
    • Shift-Right=forward
    • Shift-Left =back
    • ...why not just left/right? (these keys do nothing at the moment)

Scrolling the mouse wheel goes back and forward through the game

  • Uberdude: Also make scrolling the mouse wheel go back and forward through the moves. This is part of glGo and I found it immensely useful.

Game ended: impossible to clone

  • yoyoma: When a game finishes, observers cannot clone it or load it as a demo from the players info until after the game is deactivated (I think by everyone leaving it?), so there's no easy way to try to analyze something. Happens often in high dan games where players leave, lots of observers idling in there, but a few people want to analyze something.
    • blubb: Yeah, there's a gap in cloning possibility. As far as I can see, it only affects the period between finishing a game and starting to edit it. That's bad, anyway.

Game tree display: show coordinates

  • wms: From ddyer: A little unconventional, but in the tree control, show the move position rather than the move number superimposed on the stone. Show the move numbers along the top (sort of as the x coordinate)
    • danoontje: How is this useful? I sometimes load a pro-game and play "guess the next move" with someone. This feature would spoil this little game.
    • blubb: You still could hide the tree.

Editing the first node by removing/adding stones shouldn't affect the rest of the game

  • Rakshasa: When editing the first node by removing/adding stones it should not affect the rest of the game. The game gets messed up when you edit away the handicap stones in a game.

Joseki/Fuseki feature

  • rfielding?: A Joseki/Fuseki feature similar to MasterGo/SmartGo. Minor patch to the way they do things: when a fuseki match fails fall back on a joseki match close to the last stone played - or show fuseki, joseki, thisGameVariation matches differently.

Upload SGF and upload SGF (P) collapsed into one menu item

  • Chris Hayashida: Uploading a SGF and uploading an SGF (P) should be collapsed into one menu item, possibly with a checkbox for Private? when selecting the game.

Navigate the game by the mouse's scroll wheel

  • Chris Ball: Would it be possible to navigate the main line of the move tree via my mouse's scroll wheel?+?
    • Ansgar?: I would appreciate this too. Just let the mouse wheel behave like the previous/next move button when used on the board.

Editor: cut/past branch by context menu in the game tree display; other items

  • nachtrabe The ability to cut a variation in the tree by right-clicking at the point you want to cut (similar to how Cgoban1 does it with a contextual menu). Other good contextual menu items would be "raise/lower variation" and "autoplay from this point."
    • glue: Autoplay is already there. Just shift-click on the right arrow button. That will start the autoplay, you can set the speed of the replay with the slider.
      • nachtrabe: Well aware, I'm talking about integrating it directly into a contextual menu, which is something entirely different.
    • impu1se: I had no idea this feature existed and I've been using the client for almost a year. This got me wondering about other obscure features I may have missed. Are these documented anywhere? Maybe we need somewhere for a KGS feature cheat-sheet. So far I've discovered the following
      • shift-click on the board during review to go to the move where a stone was played at that position
      • shift-click on the next-move button to start auto-play
      • shift and control keys in combination with the arrow keys to navigate the game tree (only works if an arrow button is in focus)
      • control-click on the board to put that position in the comments (why doesn't this work during sgf editing?)
      • all the various options in the Tool menu have shift or shift-control click actions (for instance using shift-control click to change whose move it is)
      • when using the edit-tool to setup a position pressing the pass button will create a new game-tree node.
      • there's a "list named nodes" under options, but how do you name a node?

Review: when my oponnent has control, I want to see the position of a move by clicking in the tree display

  • Reflame: It would be nice, when my oponnent has control during reviewing, if I could click any node in the tree and then I would see where this move was (for example that it was F8). It would help me because when my oponnent explains "This is what would happen if you played there", it is difficult for me to keep up with his speed and realise where he suggest a different move. (Or is there already a way to solve this? Thanks.)

Editor: shift-click to "flood fill" an area/group with a selected marker

  • wayward: Shift-click to "flood fill" an area/group with a selected marker. This need only work with triangle and square markers as circles have a somewhat special purpose. For flood-filling an open area, maybe use a wider "brush" where it takes two open points for the fill to spread over? Nevertheless, this would definitely be nice for marking groups.

Editor, uploaded game: ask for "save file to hd?", when edited

  • RueLue: When I uploaded a game (e.g. for review), the client should ask me if I want to save the changed file (moves, comments, game info) to my hd. An unchanged file is not the problem. (vers.3.4.5)

KGSWishlist/Editing last edited by 216.113.202.101 on January 29, 2015 - 09:05
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