In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes
< snip >
However, I differently with this issue of allowing "standard" notation
with SGF. I advocate "defining" it as acceptable. One of the primary
reasons for having non-binary formats such as SGF and XML is to make it
human readable. It's supposed to be made easy to edit these files
manually without absolutely requiring special tools, not to mention the
ease of debugging. I would rather look at a text file than a hex
dump and is why we use text formats instead of binary formats.
Despite posts to the contrary, "ae" is harder for humans to read than
"E5" for two reasons:
1. We are used to "E5" notation. This IS the standard used by
everything except SGF. Esperanto may be just as easy to learn as
English but nobody speaks it (or only about 1 million out of 6.5 billion
do.)
2. I would argue that having a letter and a number is more clear
than having 2 letters or 2 numbers. This is an aid to distinguishing
file and rank, or row and column. If I say the A edge, it means
something with "e5" notation but it could mean 2 different things with
"aa" notation. Number is always row, Letter is always column. No
big deal, but nice.
There's a third reason. The general human convention (human-readable Go
texts, chess, map grid references) is across-then-up. SGF uses
across-then-down.
Nick
--
Nick Wedd [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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