From: Adrian Petrescu cogeco ca> Date: 31 dec 2006 Subject: Shogi record file formats? Hello, Shogi mailing list! I'm a student and a Go player who is new to the world of shogi, but very interested. When I first started playing Go several years ago, certainly the most important part of my progress was the huge availability of online players thanks to servers like KGS, IGS, Dashn, Cyberoro, etc., but also the technical excellence of the clients, which allowed you to store, review, and discuss games after they were played (or even months after they were played, thanks to the built-in database). However, after much looking, it has become abundantly clear that currently no such thing exists for English-speaking Shogi players. Although a few servers, like Kurnik and Club Shogi, do exist, they cannot even begin to be compared to existing Go servers, either in terms of popularity or functionality. So, as a fun side project (I am a Computer Science student after all :)) I have been working on a Shogi server similar in functionality (and hopefully once it is finished, similar in status) to KGS. One of the most important features to me is to store every played game in a database which can then be downloaded for offline viewing or online reviewing. In order to do this, I need some common recording format that supports a wide range of annotation features -- full support for variation trees, board annotation (marking up square and peices, etc), the ability to "set up" artificial positions, etc. I could devise my own format, but I would prefer to respect the standards that already exist in the Shogi community. In the Go community, there is a clear defacto standard: SGF. Although a few other formats exist, and are somewhat used by non-English servers, there is no arguing that SGF is by and far the most popular implementation, and any Go programmer who wants to write something knows he is safe implementing SGF. However, from what little I know about the shogi community, no such overwhelming standard exists for shogi kifu. I have found at least three competing formats: .psn, .kifu, and one that Spear uses whose extension I forget at the moment, but none of them seems to have anything resembling a majority mindshare. Additionally, I have not been able to find ANY technical documentation that clearly states the standard for any of these. I could easily learn by example, just using MacShogi or Spear to generate records I can learn from, but I would rather have some solid documentation to use, in case my examples are not a COMPLETE implementation of the standard. Also, none of the formats I've seen so far supported board annotation, although that may only be an issue with the implementation, not the format. If anybody could point me to any documentation, or give a consensus on which format(s) are the most worthy of being implemented in the server, that would speed up development and would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks in advance! --Adrian Petrescu NOTE: I apologize in advance if you have recieved this message twice. I tried it once through the regular email adddress and even after several hours it did not show up, so I'm trying again through the web interface. Hopefully it works this time. --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: shogi-l shogi net EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2i6Ys.aBsjvI.c2hvZ2kt Or send an email to: shogi-unsubscribe topica com For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=TEXFOOTER --^----------------------------------------------------------------