I'm certainly delighted at the response, thank you, and can sense there may be a way forward. Separately from this thread, Anders Kierulf has explained some things to me about SmartGo, and I'm hopeful that that will offer an ideal option.
It's going off at a tangent, but there are lots of programmers here who write for other users rather than just themselves, so, as a reminder of the sort of idiots you have to deal with, it may be worth repeating what I said to Anders. I will quote my own e-mail:
Quote:
I have written programs to handle sgf files before but I have never implemented the diagram feature and just added letters to move nodes. GoWrite appears to use my method, too, and creates diagrams on the fly rather than embedding them as separate diagram nodes in the file (it also uses PM[ ] and FG[ ] which I’m not familiar with, but letters are attached to moves via L[ ]). So I “naturally” expected SmartGo to do the same, but now I understand that you use the separate node.
That was a further clue. Previously when I saw all the moves to the end of the game given after I inserted a diagram, I assumed that really was the end of the game and so it never occurred to me to press the advance-one-move button. Now I discovered (accidentally, actually, by clicking everything in sight) that it is really an advance-one-node button, though I can’t help observing that the hint box for it actually says “Next move.”
It’s often assumed that problems between programmers and users arise because programmers have to be literal, but in my experience it’s the other way round and it’s the users who are the literal ones, like me. I remember running a network in our news room and having to deal with people who couldn’t cope with the instruction “Hit Enter.” They said – correctly – there is no “Enter” key on my keyboard.
I hasten to add that my decision to click everything in sight, although it seems to be the routine mode for young people, is for me a mark of desperation.
But I'd still like to have GoWrite working. Again as a guide to the sort of problems ordinary users have, I tried installing the latest version again and when I run the setup program, the following is what I get. First, I know I have Java installed (64-bit and 32-bit) and working. But the message below refers to a JRE and when I try running GoWrite I get a different message telling me no usable JVM can be found. The program doesn't tell me what a JVM is, or where I can get one, nor does it tell me what the difference between JRE, JVM and Java is. Really, really helpful. Looking these things up via Google is not specially helpful either, as you just get swept away by a tsunami of even more technical jargon, all interlaced with a galaxy of caveats according to whether you're using Windows, Mac, Linux or Strawberry Pie.
I'm not quite an ordinary user, in the sense that I can write quite complex programs in more than one language, and used to be pretty nifty in assembly language in my TRS80 days. I can therefore sense I may need to do something like set up an Environment path, but nowadays I just haven't got the time or the patience to sort out problems, so I steer well clear of things like registries.
Somebody kindly mentioned a command line instruction that may be what I need, but I'd appreciate a bit more detail as to when and how and why I use it, please.
Incidentally, I not only did not know there was a GoWrite forum, it would never have even occurred to me to look for one. But I'm always caught in that trap. E.g. I dither about going into London to a shop that might be closed. My daughters don't even stop to think - they just whip out their iPhones and look it up. I've got an iPhone but I'm missing the link between brain and hand and phone. (And what you might not understand is that I actually feel blessed
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I'm off to Scotland again soon, so may not respond to any replies here at once (parts of Scotland, too, are blessed with lack of wifi, and this year with a lack of midges). I was there last week and marvelled again, of course, at the mountains and sea, and haggis for breakfast, but most of all at empty parking spaces. At St Andrews, where the Pro Senior golf tournament was on, there was ample FREE long-term parking in the centre of town. I almost wished I'd done the two-day drive by car instead of spending six hours on the train. We pretend we've become more civilised over time, but where Byron was inspired by Lochnagar, I'm getting excited over a parking space...
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John Fairbairn
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