KGS Wishlist / File Handling
3. File Handling/Database Use
- [31] User Info
- [32] Game info
- [33] Game File Format and Saving
There is a page Cgoban problems and solutions (and collection of problems still without workaround) (not a bug page, not a wish list).
[31] User Info
- knakts: (2006-04-12) Ability to sort user's game list by any of the columns would be very handy. +
- Nemir: The ability to tag games in your game list for special attention, e.g. a game that has a particular opening, or that you played particularly badly and want to have reveiwed later by your 4d friend, or your pro teacher. At the moment games get lost like tears in the rain.
- Velobici: Ability to search for username based upon real name or email address. Sometimes, I know the person but not their name on KGS, would be nice to be able to find them on KGS via a search function.
- I don't understand this request. If you know somebody and or their email address why can't you just ask them what their account is. I fail to see any benefit.
- Albi: What to do if I only know my old go fellow's real name and I want to look for him on the KGS?
- rainier: It'd be nice to have the ability to sort out the unfinished games in the games list so that you wouldn't have to search for the italisized text.
- DrStraw: This is already available - use the resume button.
- Ruediger: Maybe someone wants to avoid to play against an escaper?
- iLoveSai: wms, I love KGS and wanted to thank you for creating such a wonderful program! (When my Go addiction fueled by KGS destroys my life completely, then this might evolve to a curse.)
- Under Games Tab (when lookin at someone's list of games) to be able to sort by not only ranked and all games, but also by T, P, D and W (won games) L (lost games). +
- When someone has a demo game open, it doesn't show up in one's games tab either. Would be nice to see it while the game is open.
- Able to view which games the player is observing. Or, at least be able to tell that the player is observing at least one game. (IGS has this feature and I found it helpful.)
- Have an option for the player to change log-in status such as: 1) interested in playing, 2) not open to games, 3) away from keyboard for five minutes, 4) all chats shut-off (so the other person knows you are not in a talking mood and that chats will automatically become a message to be read later), and etc. while logged on regardless of game playing status.
- ProtoDeuteric: What does this request have to do with file handling?
- Ability to search the user database. Currently you have to know someone's exact username to look up their info. Searching by (partial) real name, email address and even Notes would be useful. It might be nice to add a Location field too.+
- Matt Noonan: I'd also like to put a word of support for this idea. The IGS command "find -myschool.edu" has been very helpful for finding players in my area who might not know about an existing flesh-and-blood club in the area. It would be nice if I could do my searching on KGS, too.
- Adam Marquis Would this not be harder on kgs, with the option to hide e-mail addresses from other users? What percentage of the player population shows their e-mail? I do, however, like the location field and attached searchability. If somebody posts their location, they want people to know about it. This makes the whole thing seem less invasive to me.
- Make names in game records live links so that clicking on one brings up the user info, or put this option in the right-click menu. ++++
- Add option to display user info to the context menu of open games.
- Display the number of unfinished games a player has in the last (say) 40 as a number next to their name. This need not be available in the right-hand players list, but should be given when a player opens a game offer up, or matches someones offer.
- Ability to remove a picture and go back to having no picture. Perhaps simply a checkbox in the Edit User Info window. ++
- Fwiffo: You can do this in an ugly hackish way by uploading a GIF file.
- This is probably total fluff, but if wms runs out of things to do, I would like to see maybe the last three approved pictures saved, with the user being able to select one (or none) on the fly. + +?
- Klaus: You could also allow to save the picture on the pc, for the lazy people who lose their pictures and can't find it back.
- Fwiffo: Relax the file size restriction on user images. The image dimension restrictions are fine, but 7k is a little on the cramped side for an image of that size. Space shouldn't be too much of an issue - a single saved SGF file is bigger than 7k on average, and many people have hundreds (or thousands) of those. Many web forums have a size limit of 7k for images that are 100x100 (or smaller) so 15-20k for a 141x200 image seems reasonable.+
- Have a list of languages from which you can choose the ones you yourself speak or understand sufficiently; then when you play against someone, review their userdata, or start a private chat, you could be warned (or verify manually) that you have no language in common. Symbols as flags next to handles to convey this? +++++?++
- Nemir I disagree strongly with the flag symbols to display language. Should just have the language name. It will save on client real estate.
- blubb As I understand the above idea, the flag wouldn't show the language explicitely but only the fact if there is at least one (that is, any) language common between you and the particular person.
- Being able to view the whole rank graph, not just the past year. wms currently only saves 400 days of graph data, however.+++++?
- Rank graph - compare any two (or more ?)
- Being able to zoom in the rank graph (for users which have become a lot better during the last year).+
- Left-Right Scrollbar in the user info / Games page. For the standard size, there is more information than can be displayed in the window.
- Display rank to nearest tenth or hundredth. As in, 4k (4.35).
- Tamsin: I don't like the sound of this idea. You'd get, for example, some 4.5ks only playing 4.7ks and above and refusing to play with 4.3ks.
- Fwiffo: I'd tend to agree - is the system even going to be accurate to within a 10th of a rank? Perhaps as an alternative for those who want this feature there could be a little indicator next to the rank if they're near a promotion or demotion (like the ? indicator, for example). A 6k that is about to get promoted might be 6k^ or 6k+, or a 5k bordering on getting demoted might be 5kv or 5k-.
- Malweth: I like the tenths/hundredths but not in real time - allow people to export a CSV or other spreadsheet with the graph data. This would be ok for Tamsin's comment if you didn't allow the last 30 days to be exported. This'd be great for 3rd party graph tools.++
- blubb Show the rank confidence at the user info page. That would be not only interesting but also an instructive feedback. As a side effect, the [.?]-criteria (that is something like a rank confidence < threshold value) would become pursuable by everyone.+
- Better archive searches for accounts with lots of games. Gnugobot has been playing on average about 150 games per day. This means that there are now 300 pages of games, in a year there will be 3000 pages of games. This is not manageable. Anybody have ideas on what to do? For players with huge numbers of games, should we divide them up by year or month? Or can you think of a better way to present thousands of games convieniently? Letting people do a double-search - search based on both player's names - will make it easier to, for example, find all games somebody played against a robot, but it doesn't solve the problem of browsing the games.
- Optional date range fields with a default being the last 30 days. Only the first 300 (or whatever number is appropriate) in the specific range are shown. Additionally the number of games in the range plus the total number of games can be shown. DrStraw +
- Cap the user info listing at something manageable, like 300 games, etc.. Add a link on user info listing tab to the web (?jsp) games listing. Make any necessary improvements to the web listing to handle a massive game history. -Joshual000
- Along with that/alongside that, I'd like a feature allowing me to search for a game between 2 players based on both usernames (i.e. search for all games joshual000 vs gnugobot regardless of color) - Joshual000+
- bocephus Expand the user record with some buckets to keep track of number games played, number won, number unfinished, et cetera, both rated and free. Then when retrieving, a few simple calculations can give you your winning percentages. Could eventually be expanded to include different board sizes (at least 9x9, 13x13). I dabble in statistics and data exploration if you'd like more thoughts. Another possible bucket idea is to keep track of wins/losses based on time, resign and "on points". Large point differential bucket could also be tracked (e.g., when a player wins by 50 or more, increment the "sandbag" bucket. This could help in identfying "xxk?" players withs lots of wins, and with lots of high double/triple digit wins. If the SQL and computational code is done up right, I wouldn't envision much overhead. Generating ASCII graphics would be fairly easy: imagine bringing up some nice histograms or box and whisker diagrams.
- axd: when consulting a user's game record, his/her name in the list is superfluous and space-taking.
- Nemir: Doesn't it indicate who played as black or white?
- yes, but no need to see player name. it would me easyer to read if there is only opponent (his name), color (black or white), win (loss by resign 1,5 etc.. or win...) and why not with under-text color like other ideas or little icons.
- excession: Rank Graph - it would be interesting to see this with # of games along the x axis rather than (I mean, as well as) the date +
- Color-code the games by win/loss for the user who's list it is. Or better yet, more stats in general. Win/loss percentage by date, opponent, etc.? +++++++
- Fwiffo: Yeah, just more basic stats would be great. Total games played, games as black/white, wins/loses, free/rated games, average opponent strength, etc. It could get really elaborate (how many games did I play as black when I was 15k?), but just some basics would be an improvement. Right now, it's hard to even find out how many games someone's played.+
- pedro:If anyone is interested I started writing a program to extract and analyse the game records for this kind of data.
- mgoetze: Next to the combo box for filtering the game list (currently "all games" or "rated only", a nice addition might be "9x9 only" and/or "19x19 only"), there should be another combo box with options such as "no colors", "color by time setting" (e.g. ultrablitz=red, blitz=orange, normal=black), "color by handicap" (red=overhandicapped, blue=underhandicapped) or "color by result" (blue=win, cyan=win on time, red=loss, orange=loss on time, black=jigo). This would make it much easier to get an idea about what kind of games a certain player plays "at a glance".
- blubb: Supposedly more difficult to implement, yet more informative than just coloring and/or multiple game selection combo boxes (and probably easier to handle, as well): Make the list sortable by clicking at column headers, where each single information (i. e. date, own color, winner, loser, result, rated/free/demo, size, handicap etc.) gets a separate column, even if it is rather narrow.
- kolban: When playing a game against an opponent, have the ability to show a history of previous games that I have had against that player. The master list of all games that I play and he plays is too long to find our previous encounters.
- Hu: While there may be some merit in the idea that would balance the extra complication, in the meantime, one can sort the games list alphabetically (right click menu) to find the encounters with you.
- wrex: I'd like to second (third?) the request, though. Sorting by name is a nice tip (thanks, Hu) but it still takes a while to find your name in a long list (especially since you have to look in two different columns). It would be particularly lovely if the pulldown for "Show rated games only"/"Show all games" also included an option for "Show only your games".
- axd: (nice to have) current user info input is limited to 1000 chars. If more entered, the error message should not only mention the 1000-char limit, but also tell how much was entered in excess (that's why we have computers, to do the calculations for us): it's nice to know how much chars are needed to be removed to make it fit.
- galopin?: A feature in the context menu from the user list to open the current game of the player if applicable. Because, for the moment, we need to open te user info and go to the game list to check this.
- I put my cent: +
- Albi: Please mark the currently playing users on the user list.
- In the Games tab of user info, it would be great if the full result of each game was displayed instead of just a mark indicating who won. A small fifth column that is similar to the last column in the game list of any chat room (e.g. the one that displays "B+Res." or "W+23.5") would be ideal. For unfinished games you could indicate the current move number.
- glue: try resizing the user info window, maybe you'll see that 5th column. Note, there is also a 6th one...
- What do you know; there it is. I checked the help file though and although I could be blind, I didn't see documentation for this feature. Thanks for letting me know it's there!
- ThaddeusOlczyk: I believe that in the User Info game times are listed as local time. It would be nice if times were listed as both local time and UMT. It would also be nice if there was a small UMT clock someplace on CGoban2. It would help a lot when interacting with people in different countries.
- Ansgar?: In the Games tab, make it possible to review a game offline. Reviewing online is sometimes slow due to network lag, and first downloading and then opening the file is too uncomfortable.
- LithiumTwo: I agree, I am constantly doing this - it's a bit annoying
- Chris Ball: Could we have an option to jump to the user info of the person challenging us, as part of the Create New Game dialog? For those of us who want to check out a player's history before accepting their challenge, having to transcribe their username into the user info dialog sometimes uses up enough time to have the challenge withdrawn.
Shaydwyrm: Try clicking the question mark next to their name in the new game dialog, I think this is what you want.
- Albi: The buddy list window is wide enough to show the list multi column. I've got a lot of buddies and I have to scroll the list. (A bit lazy! ;-) )
- Albi: It would be great if the buddy list was saved on the server. It's funny if some other one connects to KGS using my computer and he see _my_ buddy list but _not his own_.
- Daveg?: If the KGS server can't afford the bandwidth for saving a buddy list for each account, at least have the home computer save a separate list for each account. It's annoying that I lost track of my buddies because I let someone else play on KGS on my computer. Now years of buddies are all mixed up, and I don't remember enough about who was who. Too bad! :)
- How about the ability to see if I have played this person before. I often recogmize a name and womder if we have had a game in the past.
- Maaaarius?: I would like KGS (the Go client) to have a column showing everyones nationality. Either in front, or behind the nick. This could be a two letter country code like US, NO, DK, UK, SE, or a small flag showing which country each player is from.If it's a two letter country code there should be a list over the codes in the client, or at the website. If you use flags instead, maybe a "mouse over" could be used to show the "name" of the country since not everyone knows every flag. It's actually very interesting to see what kind of people you play against, and maybe you find a new Go-player from your country.
- Isumisan1?: I think, that a possibility to delte your accaunt, in your info, would be usefull. Someone who has more nicks and doesn't use them, could easily delete them. But I am not sure, whether it is possible.
[32] Game Info
- 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 sort game records according to result. Secondary sorts. Put column headings over the columns and then clicking on those can control the sort, with the previous sort being the secondary sort. +++++
- Leave result field blank when displaying demo game info in players game information listing. I find it can be confusing in someones info to see for instance W+Res 4 times in a row, only to find that it's actually two victories and two demos. +
- Options to not display unwanted demo and small-board (smaller than 9x9) games from permanent record. Can implement by checkboxes or a checkable menu. +++
- Being able to request a particular progress chart. Lets say for last week, month, year etc. +
- Have a fourth tab in user info displaying stats (ie. # of won, lost, rated, free games, ratio win/loss, weakest player, stronger player.) ++
- Have more filtering options in the games record (free games, unfinished, demo, simul, won, lost games).+
- 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 helpfull 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) +
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
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 in addition to the copy to disk option.
- Be able to view filter your own game list by username.
KGS-wish: game filter screen with strength-range search criteria
- 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 :-) ).
Hence, I am interested in the following search screen,
which enables selecting games according to (a) strength (range).
- 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 on gets to know the games of all new high-dan KGS accounts.
[33] Game File Format and Saving
- 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.
- 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:
- right click on the game,
- select save to disk,
- (optionally) select a location to save the game (default is My Documents... bleh).
- approve the file name
- click ok when you pop up a message to confirm that it saved ok,
- find the main CGoban window amongst the 20+ windows I usually have open,
- click edit,
- browse around until I find the file I just saved, if I can remember where that was :)
- click open,
- 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 :).
- double click on a game,
- 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.
- 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.+
- An preference option to save all games played to disk automatically. ++++++
- 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.]
- 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 similiar. (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.
- 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...
- Ekted: There's a minor bug in the "copy game to disk" feature. If you change the folder, you lose the default name of the file. I end up having to retype it, or copy the original string before changing folders, then paste it. [This is fixed by getting the latest Java from Sun, 1.4.1 or later.]
- RoyZR: Would it be possible to put a time mark on each move indicating the remaining time in the game? That way, when reviewing a game, one could see if/when there was any time pressure. I realize this could be hard to manage with the different sorts of time limits available.
- wms: This has been done exactly the way you state ever since release 1.0.0 of KGS. Not a single KGS game file is lacking the information. If you don't see it, then it is probably either that the game had no time limits, or else the SGF editor you are using does not properly read and show the information to you.
- RoyZR: I see, thanks. Apparently gGo has been erasing the time information. Well, I'm glad to learn you plan to introduce single-window editing in CGoban.
- axd: this time mark could also be used to replay the game in a kind of "real time" mode.
- A new option like "Save current game when it finishes" or "Save current game until the end". I think that is very easy to program this, like putting a flag or mark in the game, and when you connect to KGS next time, you will have all your "saved" games on your personal games list.+
- A way to view any games offline instead of having to save file, then open manually.
- tasuki: When the forfeited game is saved on a disk, the sgf contains something like "sorry, you cant view this game, it wasnt finished"; I consider it a bug
- bojo: How about implementing an
XGF export/import interface as a beta feature? It's sad that this format will never get used unless people start implementing it, so let's take the initiative :)
- PatrickB: Well, it's important to note that the top of the linked page says: "Do not use this in real applications!" I think CGoban2 qualifies as a real application...
- bojo: Thus the term 'beta feature'. It's the "real applications" that might actually get the spec pushed forward to production ready in the first place, not the half-baked sgftoxgf command line parsers people roll just for fun.
- wms: I don't plan on implementing this. I just don't see much gain. KGS saves and loads SGF fine. It effectively shares files with other applications by this method. Why add a second file format that hardly anybody else uses? It wouldn't help me, it wouldn't help KGS users, it would only help people who want the XGF spec to be pushed forward, and that just isn't what I'm trying to do.
- frogola: The 'Load sgf file' dialog should let you sort the file list by clicking on any column header (name, size, modified) in detail view. Especially the modified date!
- frogola: When saving a newly created file, the kgs client should append an '.sgf' extension if no extension is entered in the filename. Currently client saves the file with no extension and consequently it's not listed in the 'load sgf file' dialog.
Further to this it would be nice if EqualsIgnoreCase? was used as .SGF is not recognised.
- 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.
- ivoSF? : I hope games you uploaded from hard disk, such as tournament games or any other SGF you have on your hard disk can be saved in your game list. i dont see why this isnt so already. as it is now i got to manualy imput moves in a demo i start on the server.
- wms: There are two reasons why this isn't so. One is the issue of people uploading copyrighted information. Now, an admin can kill the game. If uploaded games were saved, I would have to also add a way to go into the archives and remove files - there currently is no way to do this short of hacking around in files with a shell. Another reason is disk usage. If somebody were to upload Kogo's dictionary 20 times a day, my disk would get eaten up very fast. Between the two, I can tell you that this feature will not be implemented.
- chrpa : It would be nice, if the name of the saved game would consist of the names of the players and their rank, for example chrpa_8kyu-leia_8kyu.sgf. Hope it helps. :) With regards chrpa
- wms: Everybody wants the saved name longer, but everybody wants different things added. I've got requests to add the date to the name of the file, the ranks of the players, the size, etc., etc. In general I think the current names are just right - the names of the players, with an optional ID at the end so that two games from the same day will never have the same name.
- 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.