I visited KGS this afternoon and something jumped out at me and I never noticed it until now. There is no I after H on the alphabet when looking at coordinates. I checked by looking at my other software titles and noticed the same thing...there is no I after H. Can anybody explain this?

An I and l sure look alike, don't they?

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KGS: schultz [?].

I may be confused with L in lower case. This is the reason why I is excluded as a convention.

Perhaps because I and J are pronounced in such a similar way

Are you sure it's not because i and j would have a fight over which is actually the square root of -1?

I've gotten a half dozen bug reports along these lines. From people sure it must be some crazy mistake that there is no "i" column on their board. I try to answer as nicely as I can.

Hmm, "i" vs no "i" debate... and apparently no "i" wins... somebody has been taking liberties.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Remembering a 20 year old discussion; the original recording notation was invented in Germany and either I and J are the same letter in German or they look and or sound too similar in German. The rest of the world just adopted that convention.

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Michael Dobbins; Dragon: mdobbins, KGS: mgd, AGA#: 4253,
My Website

FWIW, in German, just an in English, i and j are written and spoken differently, so I guess the mentioned similarity between “I” (uppercase i) and “l” (lowercase L) must be the reason, just to rule out any misunderstandings w/o having to force ppl to use uppercase or lowercase letters.

Grüße aus Deutschland,

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?

Actually, I and J look very similar in at least some fraktur typefaces. I could not find tekstur typefaces to check.

Yes, this is it. Mdobbins had it. Go into a library and look for a German book from the 19th century.

I personally really hate that the westernized coordinates are totally upside down compared to the eastern coordinates. If you're coming from western igo and trying to, say, watch a Japanese igo broadcast, it's hard to tell what point the scorekeeper is announcing.

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I find it strange that shogi and go have reversed the column coordinates starting position. When I watch NHK, it just seems strange to see the first game go one way and the next go another.

I don't know why igo's coordinates are the way they are, but shogi's coordinates are set up the way you would read vertical Japanese text: Starting from the top right, going down, and then going left.

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My memory says it's from right to left, and then down. I'll rewatch the last NHK and check my memory banks.

Go is from left to right and then down.

We're thinking the same thing with different ways of remembering it. Yes, the first number goes left, and second number goes right. But I believe the way shogi's coordinates are set up is to make it natural for readers of vertical Japanese script.

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The missing "I" cost me 12 years of my go "career". Back in 1996 I had some experience with IgoWin (I got clobbered) and some other 19x19 go program whose name I have forgotten. When I saw that the "I" was missing I felt displeased and my initial interest in go diminished. I got interested in go again in 2008. Twelve years lost

Steve Jobs patented the letter for Apple.

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be immersed

This is the funniest thing I have read all day