From: Rikard Nordgren <e7rikard <at> ETEK <dot> CHALMERS <dot> SE>
Date: 20 mar 2001
Subject: About the notation

The Japanese way of notating is much simpler. Why was the alphabetic
notation
even invented?

Rikard

>
> That said, there's one point which seems common on this list but I don't
> think it should be.  It's the naming of squares: '1C' should be '13'.
> The main reason is that it's the way the Japanese use.  We'll need to
> translate Japanese literature (game scores etc) into English.  When we
> do that, translating "1<3inJapanese>" into "13" is straightforward, but
> into "1C" is not.  Well, C=3 or D=4 is actually fine, but I always have
> trouble understanding whether "6h" is 67 or 68.  I guess this use of
> alphabets instead of numbers came from chess, but this is not really
> helping even chess people since the direction is the opposite.
> I don't see any merits using alphabets here.
> ,