Public domain Go books ripe for translation

[Jujube]

I tend to have moments when I daydream think productively about nothing in particular productive things, call it a sort of mental pottering - where the day's tasks and future projects are softly rotating around, and I stare satisfactorily into the middle-distance.

So, now the scene's set, here's a rough idea of the sequence of neural firing that went on over a period of time:

• I would really like to typeset and write a beautiful book. What am I good at?
• Well I'm quite good at advising businesses on strategic planning from an analytics point of view.
• My God, that sounded boring. But how will I put these LaTeX skills to use?
• I know! Let's write a Go book.
• I'm just barely an SDK (although rising rapidly!). This is a ridiculous idea.
• I wonder if there are books / magazines that I can typeset instead. Ones that have already been written.
• Oh, right, they're all in copyright (and rightly so). Well, I could typeset some extremely old book...
• I wonder. (I look at the Japanese flashcards on the bookshelf).

So I would like suggestions please on some old books you would consider as good candidates for a project.

(And if you are the Go equivalent of Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley, let me know if you have a project for me).

(That was a witty reference to something that only British people over a certain age will get).

[sparky314]

How about some of the classical go problem books?

I know some of the more recent solutions and comments would fall under copyright, but I'm pretty sure that the older copies wouldn't be.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?ClassicalGoProblemBooks

[Jujube]

What's the legal situation with (e.g.) Maeda Tsumego? Is it 50 years from the author's death? Or 95 years from the first publication? Copyright law can be a bit unclear. I might stick with books that are at least 500 years old

I'll make a post to collect some links. Thank you for starting me off, sparky.

A Sensei's page listing mostly Chinese and some later Japanese problem books:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?ClassicalGoProblemBooks

The above page has an external link to this page, which itself has a link to a website called flygo.net, these may be worth a look:
http://www.u-go.net/classic/

Classic books that deserve the name 'classic':
http://blog.libero.it/IgoWeichiBaduk/5189468.html

A list of Japanese classic books (specifically the pre-modern section):
http://senseis.xmp.net/?JapaneseGoBooks

A list of ancient Chinese books, again from Sensei's:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?ChineseAncientBooks

A list of classical life and death problems, saying similar things to other links above:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?ClassicalLifeAndDeathProblems

I will point out that tasuki.org has excellent versions of some old books like Xuan Xuan Qijing.

[RobertJasiek]

Usually it is 70 years after the last (re)printing of a book. For newer books, you need the written agreement by the copyright owner.

[Javaness2]

If you're good at LaTex, why don't you join the BGA journal team? I'm sure they have more than enough work to keep you busy in the idle hours.

[longshanks]

[*]My God, that sounded boring. But how will I put these LaTeX skills to use?

Do you use psgo or igo packages to make your life easier? Just curious. Have only ever used LaTeX for my CV.

[Jujube]

[*]My God, that sounded boring. But how will I put these LaTeX skills to use?

Do you use psgo or igo packages to make your life easier? Just curious. Have only ever used LaTeX for my CV.

I've used both, but I prefer to make the diagrams in GoWrite. The export quality is high and I find imported images a little easier to manage rather than code listings of board positions. I do use the packages for the fonts, though. (Can't remember which, it's a while since I've used them).

I've been playing about with the tufte-latex package. I dunno, I might switch to memrise, I generally like pocket-sized books. The template is really cool though. (Sample attached).

Minue.pdf

(106.75 KiB) Downloaded 595 times

[longshanks]

Nice sample!