The usual heads-up. I have just passed "Today We Have a Splendid Feast" to Anders Kierulf at SmartGo today (6 Feb) and so this marvellous little work will soon be available to delight everyone.

Although perhaps best known for his mind-blowing Igo Hatsuyoron, the Meijin Inseki wrote several other works. This particular one, Yoshin Teiki, is now mostly lost, but if ever a complete version were to surface, it would merit consideration as replacing even Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway To All Marvels) as the most important go book ever written.

What is special about it is this: it is a tsumego course in which the Meijin, Dosetsu, takes you through nakade and seki problems (the only two surviving portions) in not just a graduated way from beginner level to super-dan, but in a comprehensive way, showing every wrinkle you are ever likely to meet in that kind of problem. The long nakade section even shows that Dosetsu understood the value of spaced repetition. The seki section is short but thorough - sekis involving double kos, double double kos, triple kos and other beasts to delight the rules mavens, but of course all the usual sekis. And because this is Dosetsu at work, there are many delightfully creative and humorous touches - such as a double nakade!

I have presented all the 135 problems and full solutions in interactive format, and have added a longish introduction describing Dosetsu and the history of the book.

As far as I know it is the first time it has appeared in book form since the 17th century.

Wow.

Can’t wait to see it.


Heh, “in book form” … fast forward ~400 yrs, omitting the past 50 years of increasingly digitalized printing, directly to interactive form on a tablet, this is quite cool.


Can’t wait. Oh, I said that before.


Greetz, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Looks very interesting! I'll certainly keep an eye out for this book.

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Avatar photo courtesy Judith van Dam/EuroGoTV

I'll look forward to the book when it's on a format I can use. Congrats on another great publication though.

Shouldn't that be "want to" not "can?"


Thank you very much John, a very nice gift to the community.

Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on an apple device so that they can spend more money on a program so that they can read a book they may or may not be able to access in the future.

This is part of a long running conversation between myself and oren about this.

Not everyone and not every rules maven, because SmartGo books work only on iOS devices, according to http://gobooks.com/index.html

Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on bigger bookshelf so that they can spend more money on physical books so they can read a book they may or may not be able to acces in the future because... Do I need to explain to you how many possible ways there are to lose/destroy physical book?

Ten years ago I lost my entire 1000 books collection because I moved to another city and was not able to transfer these books. So please stop bitching about e-book format.

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Tsumego/Tesuji apps for iPad, iPhone & Android devices:http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7511

I don't think anyone did.

As far as I understood the problem was with the proprietary and restrictive nature of the format the ebook was offered in.
I suspect there would be no such complaints if the book was made available in epub format, for example.

SmartGo books format specification is not a mystery, Anders made it public. I'm sure some other developer could take it and create similar app for windows, android, linux etc.

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Tsumego/Tesuji apps for iPad, iPhone & Android devices:http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7511

Sure, but given the prevalence of piracy even within the small go community you'd have to be pretty crazy to set up a business releasing go books in epub or any other similar format. No?

I have no idea. Robert Jasiek seemed to make the contrary argument in his thread on ebooks. It may be that the experience varies by publisher/author/book.

I’ve been a user of Apple products since dinosaurs walked on earth, simply because of their superior quality, yet I understand and empathize with this. We never know when one company may swim belly-up, and then we may be bereft of everything we paid for. I for one have, in the past three decades, paid hundreds and thousands of Deutschmark and Euro for hard- and software that later was abandoned (NeXTcube, anybody? ), and this is not because I’m dumb (hopefully) but because I WORK with this stuff and had to be an early adopter for many years, if only, sometimes, to know about stuff.

Anyway … SmartGo Books is one of the finest products out there, and I’ve heard people say they purchased their iSomething only for this. And iOS gadgets are becoming more affordable, and if you count in all that you can do with these things, some day you might find it worth the investment. Time ain’t going backwards any time soon, even though I sometimes wish for it (having worked with computers for 30+ yrs now, I sometimes dread all things digital, and it’s getting worse).

Greetings, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

All this ebook, nonsense is off topic. Apple produces a proprietary product, you buy the product knowing full and well most people won't support it. Expecting other people to support your product because you paid the premium for, proprietary-kludged-non-commodity-designer-looks, which most of us don't have, is insulting.

I've been bitten by this in the past too, and file format issues are a continual if occasional problem at my job, which is why I tend to push for open formats that can be read by multiple types of devices or programs. I don't expect Apple will go belly-up anytime soon, but I have no idea about smartgo. In addition, the earlier statement that the format is open has left me skeptical, as while it may be documented, there is no way to purchase the books without using the application, as far as I know.

Well, I find this insulting. I'm not paying a "designer-looks" premium. I'm paying for an utility premium (and assuming it's really a premium, I've found no rival in price and capacity for my recent purchase of a Macbook Air to upgrade my 2008 Macbook.) A lot of people are in for the looks, but there's a huge lot of people who are there for the capabilities of the machines, only. And for Mac OS, probably.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

It reminds me of a conversation I had with AT&T when trying to get a "smart phone" without a data package, which you can't do. The customer service representative said, "If you buy a Porsche, you need to buy premium gas for it". The bottom line is it is a tiered scheme, which is insulting to my intelligence, thanks for that. You're hardware is a kludge.

I don't get the analogy. I find it hard to see where I paid the supposed premium compared to other vendors still, and I could easily wipe my Mac and install whatever I fancied if I wanted to, if just for the hardware factor.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Lets talk about how easy it is after you have done it. Wipe your iPhone and iPad to while you're at, lets see how that goes.