Recently I came across a blank kifu book by Yellow Mountain Imports on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Go-Game-Record-Bo ... B001A6YQVM


I emailed them and was told that they didn't have any left in stock but hoped to be getting some soon. Does anyone know another shop that sells similar books? I know I could just print out single kifu sheets, but I like having them all neatly collected in a book like I have for my chess games.

Oh--speaking of chess games, why are SGF files not collected? With chess's PGN I can have all of the games I've ever played neatly bundled together, but for SGF's I have to have an individual file for each game. When I used like Drago or some similar program to append them I could go forward to the next game but had no idea as to what game it would be. So basically, I just want to know if I'm a moron who can't understand how to use SGF files to their potential or if SGF files will forever be like the ugly stepchild of chess's brilliant and perfect PGN.

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I came to go through Kawabata and was introduced to a whole new world.

That's an interesting idea. How many pages do your chess equivalents have?

You can have multiple games inside an SGF but it's kinda awkward and confuses a lot of software, so people usually don't do it.

I like this kifu book, but it's kinda expensive: http://www.apple.com/ipad/

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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Yep. Cgoban (KGS) is the only editor that handles this eloquently. Anyone seen anything different?

But, you CAN have database files that collect multiple games. I use SmartGo but there are others.

Quarry can read them, but IIRC they show up as multiple variation trees. I need to double check that. A different interface would be nice.

SmartGo can do it for sure (I don't like SmartGo's interface in general, but the way they handle game collections is good.) I didn't know CGoban3 could read collections - how does it handle them? One tree branch per game?

Sorry - I misleadingly conflated two different issues. The first issue I see is what program/sgf editor can properly handle multiple games in a single .sgf file. The only interface I've seen do so eloquently is cgoban, and it sees them as different braches. But I think this is only useful for a relatively small number of games, as I am unaware of any searching feature. SmartGo doesn't deal with this so well; although it also sees the games as multiple branches, it is more confusing to navigate IMO.

The second issue was regarding multi-sgf database. This, I think SmartGo does very well, even with tens of thousands of games.

Our own Hilltopgo has a Cafepress shop that sells blank recording books among other Go related items.

Drago also allows it but i think it is only the newest versions.

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

Hmm, I wasn't aware that the multi-sgf part of the question was talking about anything different than an SGF collection. If you mean storing them in an external database for searching, SmartGo or Kombilo both work fine.

I haven't used SmartGo enough to know how to set it up or even find the navigation, but I've seen Jim Kerwin give a lecture where he had an SGF collection that he navigated in SmartGo and it listed the games separately rather than showing branches the way Quarry (or CGoban3) does.

Although come to think of it, he had "hotspots" defined for the sections of the games he wanted to focus on, so I guess I might have been seeing just the bookmark navigation. Maybe if he'd had a different pane open it would have just showed 8 tree branches, one per game. I don't use SmartGo (I think it's really ugly and don't like the interface in general, plus it's Windows only) so it might just be that I didn't know what part of it I was looking at.

But it seems like that sort of navigation would be a nice feature - I'll see about adding it to Quarry. I'm almost done with UGF import (finally); the game loads, and you can play through it, but variations and comments aren't loaded yet.

Do you also find it ugly that mp3s contain one song, jpgs one image, htmls one html page, pdfs one document, txts one... text stream, exes one executable? From your description, PGN just seems overengineered.

SmartGo does organize multi-sgf databases very well, IMO, by name (not as a tree). I meant that if you have some games (say 10 or so) in a single sgf file, I like the way Cgoban handles the navigation.

Also, the Windows-only thing is a hassle since I use Ubuntu, it works through VirtualBox (though native would be better), and older versions work well in Wine (newer versions don't display stones correctly).

To the OP: sorry if this went a little OT.

Well, Quarry does the SGF collection navigation the same way as CGoban3, if I'm understanding you properly, and the last stable version is in the universe repository - you should apt-get install it!

The only tool I have to create collections (that I know of) is sgfMerge, which throws away the game info node, apparently. I tried to add it in for the games myself to make sure that worked ok, and it looks like Quarry might disregard any game info (player names, ranks, komi, etc.) after the first game. The trees themselves are perfect though. I'll see about getting collections to work better vis-a-vis multiple game info nodes and also add a way to navigate them by game title.



Yeah - I'm hopeful that we're still working on the last question in the original post rather than being way off base. Sorry if we are though.

I had no idea. Done.

A local stationery store carries Rhodia No. 13 graph paper spiral-bound pads. These are A6 (about 4"x6") size paper and it's convenient in tournaments where table real estate is skimpy. I just draw my own kifus on them with a ruler and pencil.

Here's a link to the stapled version on Amazon (I can't find the spiral one): http://www.amazon.com/Rhodia-Classic-Staple-Bound-Graph/dp/B0016MNSOG/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1287469178&sr=8-3-fkmr2.

And the actual spiral ones I used are here (although I didn't get them at this site): http://www.vickerey.com/prh520.html

Although I don't have them, Rhodia does sell some nice holders for their notebooks.

http://mohsart.se/lang-en/diverse/474-k ... or-go.html

/Mats

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mohsart - games & books
http://spel.mohsart.se/

I made my own kifu by copying an existing kifu blank page into illustrator and took off some stuff and added others, like my name. I went to kinkos and printed 100 pages and they glued them up like a legal pad. was cheep too. like 5 bucks.

I just made my own as well. Starting with the Kifu PDF's from http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/2 ... hi-all-pdf I used the two-per-page kifu and printed 50 sheets at Kinkos. Then I had them cut the stack in half (making them 8.5" x 5.5") and hot glue the ends to make two 50-sheet pads. It's not the greatest binding ever, but it's good enough.

50 prints: $5.00
Cut and glue: $2.60

Total: $7.60 for 2x50-sheet pads.

Regarding the files that I linked above, I'm not sure why he didn't include the gray versions in that archive, but they are worth asking him for. I like the lighter lines much better than the solid black ones.