.goa file format

[nickxyzt]

I have some files coded in the format .goa, like the one attached (I had to rename it to 06.sgf because of the restrictions in this forum - please rename it as 06.goa) , from an old software (Go Game Assistant).

Does anybody know how to convert them to sgf?

[EDIT: because of a possible copyright infringement, the attachment was deleted]

[DeFlow]

Have you tried converting it by using Go Game Assistant? It supports both SGF and .goa.

[nickxyzt]

GoAssistant opens the file, however I don't find a way to convert it to sgf.
This .goa file contains more than one game.

The collection is from the book Next Move Problems, by Fujisawa Shuko, ISBN 7-81051-780-5.

[tchan001]

Probably not a good idea to talk on this forum about converting a collection of problems which may not have been authorized by the copyright holder for that format. Do you own a copy of the book from which the problems came from?

[nickxyzt]

No, I don't own a copy, but one of my friend has.

However, it's a chinese book, so as far as I know it's in the public domain. Am I wrong?

[tchan001]

It may be on the internet but that doesn't make it public domain.
Just because it is in a foreign language which you may not understand doesn't make it public domain.
I can tell you I own a copy of that Chinese book as well as many other Asian go books and I would certainly have the right to make personal sgf versions of the problems from the book for myself

[nickxyzt]

As far as I know, in China there isn't a law about intelectual property.
I was refering strictly to books published in China (mainland). Am I wrong?

[jts]

As far as I know, in China there isn't a law about intelectual property.
I was refering strictly to books published in China (mainland). Am I wrong?

So far as I know, problems aren't under copyright anywhere. They're treated like mathematical equations or historical facts. It's the books themselves to which copyright applies.

[kivi]

As far as I know, in China there isn't a law about intelectual property.
I was refering strictly to books published in China (mainland). Am I wrong?

This is not true. There are laws regarding copyrights, patents, etc. in China. But what typically happens is that when a foreign company sues a Chinese company for e.g. copying their design, Chinese court easily dismisses the case.

That being said, I think problems without solutions, and game records without commentary can not be copyrighted. So it should be ok as long as you are not posting scanned pages of a book.

[tchan001]

As far as I know, in China there isn't a law about intelectual property.
I was refering strictly to books published in China (mainland). Am I wrong?

If what you say is true, why does Yutopian pay for the right to translate Chinese books into English? Are they just philantropists who want to donate to the Chinese go book publishers?
Do westerners order Chinese go books from places such as Yellow Mountain Imports? If there is a market for Asian go books in the West, why would Western publishers respect the copyright of those books instead of just ripping them off and publishing them without compensation to the Asian go book publishers?

Therefore, it is not a good idea to talk about such content as if there is no piracy involved. Please note that piracy is against the TOS of this forum.

L19 TOS
6. Piracy
Posts requesting for anything illegal or copyrighted are not allowed. Links to sites that host warez or torrents for illegal content will be removed at once.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?ProblemCollecti ... Discussion

Charles Matthews The classic problem collections in their original editions are in the public domain, for reasons of age. That doesn't apply to more recent editions, and collections made from them. If this sort of material is posted, it would be much better done from the old editions. The same point occurs, for example, with old poetry.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?SLCopyright%2FDiscussion

Just a few legal notes: copyright protects the _expression_ of an idea, not the idea itself. Copying the text and diagrams of Richard Hunter's books or articles violates his copyright, but reexpressing those ideas is fine. If you want to protect the idea itself [101], you need to get a patent. Under the Geneva convention, no claiming or registration of copyright is necessary: the copyright is inherent in the act of expression. Not all expressions are copyrightable: for example, in the US, noncreative works such as font designs, and material facts such as game records and game positions are not protectable. Composed go problems and positions, on the other hand, are creative, protectable works. Copyright protects an individual expression of an idea. For example, if you and I each independently write a novel, and the novels turn out to be word-for-word identical, neither of us has an infringement claim against the other. Each of us owns our own copyright to our own novel. This is farfetched for a novel, and a judge might be persuaded that someone was lying, but this could quite easily happen for a go problem. Fair use allows limited copying of copyrighted work under a fairly complicated set of restrictions. IMO, the DeepThoughts page was somewhat too derivative to fall under fair use, but this is a judgement call, not at all black and white. Public domain refers to expressions which could be subject to copyright, but are not for some reason, e.g. copyright holder has assigned work to public domain, creator has been dead for 50 years, etc. It does not apply to ideas, which are not subject to copyright in any case. --DougRidgway

Also read these L19 discussions
viewtopic.php?p=115751
viewtopic.php?p=101634

Finally, did you know that the Chinese book you are talking about is a translation of a Japanese go book under license?
http://senseis.xmp.net/?FujisawaShukoWeiqiClassroom

Fujisawa Shuko Weiqi Classroom (藤泽秀行围棋教室) is a set of five volumes written by Fujisawa Shuko, copyright Hirotada Ototake. In 2003, the five volumes were translated into Chinese for publication by Beijing Sport University Press (北京体育出版社) under license from Hirotada Ototake Ltd.

[xed_over]

I have some files coded in the format .goa, ... , from an old software (Go Game Assistant).

Does anybody know how to convert them to sgf?

to answer the original question...

The GOA file is a proprietary binary file format. The only way to convert it to SGF would be to use that program's own Save As or Export functionality (if it exists), or to disassemble the binary code (which would be a similar, yet different kind of wrong from the mere book copyright discussion of the thread).

Otherwise, you would have to painstakingly copy the moves by hand (and its possible that this too gets into copyright issues -- but perhaps only for redistribution, not for personal use).

The short answer is, no, I do not believe there is a GOA to SGF converter available.

[Mike Novack]

The GOA file is a proprietary binary file format. The only way to convert it to SGF would be to use that program's own Save As or Export functionality (if it exists), or to disassemble the binary code (which would be a similar, yet different kind of wrong from the mere book copyright discussion of the thread)...........
The short answer is, no, I do not believe there is a GOA to SGF converter available.

Maybe not the place to discuss this, but an experienced programmer/analyst designing a program to convert from one data format to another might be able to do this without bothering to look at the programs at either end. Perhaps all that would be needed is a good understanding of the data being represented (go games, go board positions) and the various ways that might be done.

[nickxyzt]

The problem is that the file is binary (without specifications), and the original software doesn't have an option to save/export them. I guess they will remain in that format.

Thank you all for your responses.

[Mike Novack]

All data is binary (until you know what the binary may be representing)

I'll give you an example. Suppose I am examining the records of an unkown file using a hex editor (that's what I'd use for a binary file). I see that the first seven bytes of each record look like this:

x'01998C002C002C' (the numbers might be different in different records but the C's in the same place, the first digit and the two after the C's are always zero,the digits before the second C in the range 001 to 012 and before the last C in the range 001 to 031)

Then I conclude:
a) The data in the first seven bytes of the record is encoded BCD (binary coded decimal), three such BCD fields
b) What is being represented is a date (in the example, February 2nd, 1998)

Suppose instead I saw
x'1998033C' in the first four bytes (again the digits could be different in each record but the first four alway 19zz or 20zz and the last three always in the range 1 to 366) Then I conclude the format is again BCD and the data represented is a Julian date, still Feb 2nd.

I did say that experience was necessary. Once you have looked at data in the course of solving a zillion dumps you'd begin to recognize the various "standard" ways data might be being represented. What I was suggesting is that with knowledge of the various different ways people have represented go data somebody could "decode" this binary file by inspection.

PS: I was using examples where the encoding was BCD because that would be common were the language of the shop COBOL. That's another sort of knowledge that might be useful. Not cheating to determine what language the program was written in (as opposed to reading the code to see what it did). Thus if I knew that the language of the program that created the file was C (or say FORTRAN) I would not expect data encoded using BCD, unless of course the C or FORTRAN program was creating a file to be read by one in COBOL.