KGS Wishlist / File Handling

Sub-page of KGSWishlist

3. File Handling/Database Use

Preface

This page is for collecting improvements and features requests concerning game info, file format and handling in CGoban

The topics around the user info (user profiles) moved to the page KGSWishlist / User Info

Bugs, Problems, Solutions:

If you have a technical problem with CGoban or an idea for circumventing a problem with CGoban, add it there: Cgoban problems and solutions (and collection of problems still without workaround; it's not a bug page and not a wish list).
To point out a bug instead of a wish, go to KGS Bugs.


[32] Game info - [33] Game File Format and Saving

Table of contents

[32] Game Info

Games, left by my opponent, should not italicized in my games list

  • Unfinished games of PlayerA: distinguish if it was left by him or by his opponent. Right now all unfinished games are italicized. Regarding Forfeited games, I agree with Hu, it would be helpful to distinguish those won by forfeit from those lost by forfeit.isshoni

Option to re-classify games to be unavailable for public viewing

  • iLoveSai: Option to re-classify games to be unavailable for public viewing. For example, if one changes R games to NVR (not viewable) it can be in bold or something but it will still show that it used to be R but black out the opponent's name also but will still list other info about the game.
    • If one choses [-] as rank option, then maybe their R games will be blacked out like how I described above? [They can't play R games. Old R games should be visible as some turn dash on and off.]

Option to not display unwanted games

  • Options to not display unwanted demo and small-board (smaller than 9x9) games from permanent record. Can implement by checkboxes or a checkable menu. +++

Request a particular progress chart

  • Being able to request a particular progress chart. Lets say for last week, month, year etc. +

A tab in user info displaying statistics

  • Have a fourth tab in user info displaying stats (ie. # of won, lost, rated, free games, ratio win/loss, weakest player, stronger player.) ++

Room: headings above the games list + few more categories

  • Nixihou: It would be nice to have headings in the chatroom window above the game-selection part. Like "Challenger" "Grade" "Opponent" "Grade" "Size" "Result" "Bystander". A few more categories would be helpful though. e.g. "Time System" "Rule Set" "Game Status". I would like to have the possibility to sort the gamelist by clicking on one category. (windows explorer like) +

Search for users you've played

  • A typeahead textfield (just like Mozilla's URL-window) to search for users you've played. Instant stats would be sort of cool too.
    • Even better if it did a case insensitive match search against the current result set.

Observing: "Send Result When Finished" button

  • Tamsin: Often I observe a game and need to leave before it is over. Would it be possible to have "Send Result When Finished" button, which would leave you a message while you're offline to let you know, once you logged back in, the result of a game that you were watching?

"View offline" in the context menu of the game list

  • "View offline" in the context menu of the game list in addition to the copy to disk option.

Filter your own game list by username

  • Be able to view filter your own game list by username.

Observing: allow viewers to place markers on the board

  • During D and T games allow viewers(maybe selected ones) to place markers on board to mark suggested moves. Markers possibly can be enlarged to an avatar or nickname of the person who placed it by clicking.

My games list: show users, which viewed a specific game

  • backpacker? : when you go to your own game list, have a mouse over function that would list the users that have opened that game and viewed it since the game ended.

Add game type (Ranked, Free, Demo, Teaching) to the game record

  • Add game type (Ranked, Free, Demo, Teaching) to game record so that it can be displayed in the "Game Info." Marathon +

Filter games by any property of the stored SGF file

  • tderz Being able to filter games by any property of the stored SGF file (is perhaps asked too much). However, I am esp. interested to filter games according to strength e.g. "Best KGS games of the week" in order to find some exciting games (between 6-9 dan players; let's add The Captain :-) ).
    • It would be inefficient to be logged in to KGS and 'wait' for those game and/or to check out the archive for some players (while they might not have played for ages and/or changed account).
    • Secondly one gets to know the games of all new high-dan KGS accounts.

Hence, I am interested in the following search screen, which enables selecting games according to (a) strength (range).

Escaper detection

Escape: A mark on the game list shows, who escaped

  • tasuki: I would really appreciate some kind of mark on the game list to show who escaped the unfinished game, it would be very helpful in identifying escapers.

Escape: what about creating a "~"-like mark for escapers?

  • While I'm at it, what about creating a "~"-like mark for escapers? isshoni

Escape: When a game is lost due to Forfeit (escaping), leave it italicized

  • Hu: When a game is lost due to Forfeit (escaping), leave it italicized so that it can be distinguished from a game that is won due to Forfeit. Or use some other way to distinguish, like "+Forf." or "-Forf.".
    • DangoMouse: Hu, I might just point out that you can tell who forfeited by looking at the marker that indicates which player won. Although, maybe you know this already. (Hu: true, but it requires figuring it out. I am hoping for something that will be easily visible in a scan).

Escaper handling: make a move, when opponent not online, switch the escaper mark to the opponent

  • KGS user buty1954: In an unfinished game, if the marked player make the next move in absence of the opponent the server should move the escaper mark to the opponent. Now the opponent not coming to continue the game would be rightfully marked as escaper. No need to change any other server function related to escaper mark. This way each player is going to be motivated to continue unfinished games.

Further explanation:

  1. A player who get the opponent disconnected (intended or due technical reason) can refuse to continue the game and will never get an escaper mark. Unlimited number of adjourned games can be cancelled or awarded as wins by forfeit to a player who use this opportunity, mainly in games to be eventually lost. I call this a method of cheating.
  2. Discussions (invitation to continue a game) are not relevant to the server. The award of escaper mark is limited to "the first to leave a game". When the player marked as escaper will try to continue the game and the opponent will refuse, the escaper is no longer the same. But the server keeps the escaper mark on the same player.

So, the improvements should be as follows:

  1. The player initially marked as escaper can make the next move in absence of the opponent. (? DONE oct.2010 ?)
  2. Making a move, when the opponent is not in the game, switches the escaper mark to the opponent.
  • Tapir: Even if the system keeps track of who left the game first, currently there is no escaper mark in the proper sense.

[33] Game File Format and Saving

Ask both players to save a review

  • WayneC (2009-03-20) Allow both players in a game to save a subsequent reviewed game to their game record. Currently only the player who first selects the Review Game option is even given the option on closing the review to save it. There is always the option to save the review offline to disk, but not to save to your game record. I lost one or two reviews before I discovered this limitation. At my level I like to go over the review almost immediately after, at a slower pace, to better study and understand it, and find having the review in my game record to be more convenient. Consider a typical scenario where the weaker player, after the game asks "Review?", the stronger player says "Sure", then takes control. He does a nice review, says goodbye, leaves the game, and then the other player is confronted with the familiar "The owner of this game has left, no changes can be made until the owner returns" message, and is left to figure out how to preserve the review. His only option now is to save to disk, and there is no warning on close if he does not do so. There is a partial workaround involving cloning the game, but that will only save the variations; comments will be stripped in the clone. +

Local game database: "Add to Database" as button in the editor and option in games list context menu

  • Sinprejic A local game database that exposed the metadata (names, ranks, rules, free/rated, time controls, etc) about the game in a searchable interface would also be nice. Add a "Add to Database" button in the editor, and the right mouse of the player info game list.

Load a game directly for off-line viewing from a user's games list

  • Sinprejic I want to be able to load a game directly for off-line viewing from a user's list of games (in player info). Instead, I have to:
    1. right click on the game,
    2. select save to disk,
    3. (optionally) select a location to save the game (default is My Documents... bleh).
    4. approve the file name
    5. click ok when you pop up a message to confirm that it saved ok,
    6. find the main CGoban window amongst the 20+ windows I usually have open,
    7. click edit,
    8. browse around until I find the file I just saved, if I can remember where that was :)
    9. click open,
    10. and then, finally, Cgoban will open the file. (PHEW! I need a break :) )
  • (Above suggestion continued) Most of the time I have no interest in keeping the game beyond my inspection of it right then and there. Often I am peeking at games of a recent opponent, or possible future opponent to see what their style looks like. So all that effort is entirely wasted and in fact it implies additional effort to get rid of the games that wind up cluttering up my My documents, or my desktop or wherever. I put the game. And finally I just managed to do something really annoying. It seems that I can close the main window, and there is no way to get it back beyond restarting CGoban. (That I can find quickly). So NOW I can't view games off-line at all without restarting. I highly doubt that many people download games and never open them, whilst I'm fairly sure opening games and never saving them would be reasonable use case. I don't want to load them into a room because I don't want people to join, I'm not looking to discuss and I don't want to worry about the reaction of the person who's game I'm reviewing (if any). I just want to quietly review the game without distraction. Here's my suggestion of the ideal UI... (IMHO) Of course if this were open source I'd just send you a patch :).
    1. double click on a game,
    2. It loads itself into a local offline window. (Seems a whole lot more user friendly to me :) )
    • blubb: In my view, an highly interactive Go server like KGS should load games online by default, so they can be reviewed together with other players. Perhaps a "View offline" command in the context menu would make some sense, but actually, "Load (P) in ..." behaves rather similar already, from the user`s point of view.
    • Sinprejic: I don't much care if it is double click or right mouse option. The point is right now it's a much longer and far more complicated process than it needs to be. Personally, I have never understood the purpose of solo online-private review. If you're not letting anyone else in, why not just do it off line and not tax server resources? I sure teachers can use this for paid lessons, but I'm not talking about the interactive use case. Not everyone wants to interact all the time :). This request is to make solo self-review easier.

Option to save the review, when closing it

  • TJ: An option to save to server instead of just a dialogue that may or may not pop up depending on who took editing control first. It can be greyed out if the user isn't allowed to save the game to the server so that they'll know they'll lose the data unless they save to disk.++

Save all games played to disk automatically

  • TJ: An preference option to save all games played to disk automatically. ++++++++++

not clear, what is meant

  • TJ: An interface like the server interface to open games offline instead of the current file and folder "who was that game against again?" system. [Perhaps this should be clarified. First occurrence in version 13 of KGSWishlist (/?diff=KGSWishlist&old=13&mode=stddiff)]

Preference option for default file name string

  • Change default filename to put timestamp first for easier sorting.++
    • Hu: Preference option for default file name string to use. My preference is Whiteplayer-Blackplayer-[R|F|RD|FD]-YYYYMMDD.sgf.
    • eng60340 : i dunno what Hu meant by the Whiteplayer-Blackplayer-[R|F|RD|FD]-YYYYMMDD.sgf format. i just need the players name and rank to be inside the file name. (meaningless if there's no rank as a reference)
    • Default filename of a D based on a played game should be the filename of the game with the postfix "_D" or "-D" or similar. (Incorporate this when implementing the preference option wish above.)
    • Could we set the default name up like stftime on UNIX? Have a set of generic variables we can combine in the dialogue blank to make our own filename format which is as detailed as we want. %bp black player's name, %br black player's rank, %bs black score, %r result like W+R, %ws white score, %Y year like 2004, %y year like 04, etc. Make options for as much as you can pull out of a game and the current date/time, such as base time, byo yomi, etc, and everyone should be happy with the flexibility if they don't like what is chosen as the default.
    • kokiri - ideally i would like to be able to customise, or choose (say from the settings menu) from a range formats.

Don't show unfinished games on the website

  • If a game is unfinished, why show it on the website? As is seems to serve no purpose, I suggest not showing them. +
    • On the other hand, why not? You could review games where your opponent disappeared and check if you were winning or not...

UGF import

Use time mark to replay the game in a kind of "real time" mode

  • axd: this time mark could also be used to replay the game in a kind of "real time" mode.

View game offline (e.g. by context menu)

  • A way to view any games offline instead of having to save file, then open manually.

Load file dialogue: doesn't show files "*.SGF" (uppercase)

  • Further to this it would be nice if EqualsIgnoreCase was used as .SGF is not recognised.
    • RueLue (vers.3.4.5): this is still valid: opening xyz.sgf is no problem; for xyz.SGF you need to switch the filetype to "*". Possibly there is a problem, when using that parameter in Linux/MacOSX. wms will know how to code this.

Warn when opening an irregular sgf file

  • Ansgar?: Warn when opening a sgf collection. Cgoban2 shows only the first gametree in a collection, after saving the file again the other trees are lost.
    • RueLue (v.3.4.5): I tried it with some older versions of CGoban (down to v.2.4.19) and had no problem. Fixed by wms? Some special kind of collection? When I open a collection, merged by cgoban, it is displayed correct. Possibly another program merged the collection, and a format problem was in the file? Do you still have a sample file? If the problem is gone, please leave a notice here. thx
    • RueLue (v3.4.5): I could reproduce this behavior with a collection file merged by Drago (oh - version? 4.01 ... and still 4.10). Another similar file, merged by MultiGo, couldn't be opened because of "Redundant rules definition".
      • RueLue: I looked into the file: (;rootdata;move;move;...)(;rootdata;move;move;...)(...). I think, the problem is the missing warning, that there is a file, which doesn't comply with the sgf file format (or it's understanding of it), and that there is risk of losing data, when proceeding with editing this file.

Games list: time settings could be listed

  • emiliogo : It would be nice if in the game's list, time settings would be listed also. It is done for open games but not for active games. Another suggestion is to put it in another column. The use for this is to be able to sort blitz from non-blitz games. I, for instance, dislike to watching blitz games. Ty.

Collapsable branches for the SGF viewer

  • max? : I was wondering whether it could be possible to implement collapsable branches for the SGF viewer. Right now, the software is not that friendly with big SGF files (i.e. it is quite difficult to move from branch to branch).

Fully support the SGF version 4

  • Harleqin: Fully support the SGF version 4 (FF[4]) Size tag, i.e. rectangular boards can be represented as e.g. SZ[4:3].

Editor: label the different branches

  • wdst20: When dealing with sgf's there should be some ability where you can label the different branches at the bottom, so it'll make navigation easier.
    • RueLue: The editor (offline and online) allows to give names to "nodes" and change them, but a list of named nodes can only be shown offline (oct.2010)

Allow a guest user to save a game from another user's game list (solved?)


KGS Wishlist / File Handling last edited by 185.66.193.33 on August 20, 2017 - 10:30
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