| 1 | Kombilo 0.5 - a go database program |
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| 2 | |
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| 3 | This program was written by Ulrich Goertz (u@g0ertz.de), and is published |
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| 4 | under the GNU General Public License. |
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| 5 | |
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| 6 | What follows is a brief description of the features of Kombilo. |
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| 7 | More detailed information can be found in the tutorial, either at |
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| 8 | http://www.g0ertz.de/kombilo/tutorial.html or from Kombilo's |
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| 9 | help menu. |
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| 10 | |
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| 11 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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| 12 | |
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| 13 | Acknowledgments: |
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| 14 | |
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| 15 | I am very grateful to all the people who sent me their comments and |
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| 16 | suggestions for improvements. |
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| 17 | |
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| 18 | Disclaimer: |
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| 19 | |
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| 20 | I have thoroughly tested Kombilo on a Linux box, and on a Windows 2000 |
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| 21 | system. There are no bugs that I know of, but probably some bugs exist |
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| 22 | nevertheless. So let me state clearly that this program comes WITHOUT |
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| 23 | ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or |
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| 24 | FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License |
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| 25 | for more details. |
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| 26 | |
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| 27 | Where to get Kombilo: |
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| 28 | |
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| 29 | - You can download the Kombilo distribution (as a .exe installer for Windows, |
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| 30 | as a .tar.gz for Linux/Unix or as a .zip file for Windows/Macintosh) from |
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| 31 | |
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| 32 | http://www.g0ertz.de/kombilo/ |
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| 33 | |
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| 34 | (NB: The 0 in g0ertz is a zero!) |
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| 35 | |
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| 36 | On that page you can also find more information about Kombilo, including |
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| 37 | a brief tutorial with some screenshots. |
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| 38 | |
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| 39 | Give it a try and please send me your feedback! Any comments, and especially |
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| 40 | bug reports are welcome. |
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| 41 | |
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| 42 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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| 43 | |
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| 44 | Kombilo is a go database program. Its main purpose is to search for |
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| 45 | games in which a given pattern or position occurs. You can also |
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| 46 | search for other criteria (like time period, players, events). |
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| 47 | |
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| 48 | Version 0.5 of Kombilo has now been released. A few bugs in version 0.5 |
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| 49 | have been fixed, and several features have been added (see below). |
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| 50 | |
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| 51 | The main features of Kombilo are: |
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| 52 | |
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| 53 | * It is free software, published under the GNU General Public License: |
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| 54 | you may download and use it for free, redistribute it (and even |
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| 55 | modify it, if you release the changes under the same license). |
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| 56 | |
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| 57 | * It works on most current operating systems: The main part of Kombilo |
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| 58 | is written in Python, a programming language which is available for |
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| 59 | most platforms, including Unix/Linux, Windows, Macintosh ... |
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| 60 | For Windows, a comfortable installer is available, which makes it |
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| 61 | unnecessary to install Python. |
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| 62 | |
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| 63 | * The main purpose of the program is to search for patterns in SGF files, |
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| 64 | like |
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| 65 | |
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| 66 | |---------- |
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| 67 | |.......... |
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| 68 | |.......... |
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| 69 | |...X.X.... |
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| 70 | |..X....... (A) |
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| 71 | |..XO...... |
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| 72 | |..OO...... |
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| 73 | |.......... |
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| 74 | |
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| 75 | in the corner, or |
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| 76 | |
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| 77 | ...... |
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| 78 | ..XO.. |
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| 79 | ..OX.. |
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| 80 | ...... |
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| 81 | |
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| 82 | anywhere on the board. |
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| 83 | |
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| 84 | Of course, you don't have to enter ASCII diagrams, but there is a |
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| 85 | comfortable graphical user interface :-) |
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| 86 | |
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| 87 | The program produces a list of all games in which that pattern |
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| 88 | occurs. You can look at the games with the included SGF editor. |
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| 89 | |
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| 90 | Furthermore, Kombilo can display all the continuations that were |
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| 91 | played in the search diagram. This makes it particularly easy to |
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| 92 | study joseki and fuseki lines. |
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| 93 | |
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| 94 | * The database is built from game records in SGF format. The |
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| 95 | program does not come with any games included. But since there |
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| 96 | are many sources for games in SGF format, this should be no |
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| 97 | problem. |
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| 98 | |
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| 99 | One possibility is to download game collections like the |
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| 100 | collection of games from Cho Chikun made available by Jan van |
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| 101 | Rongen, or the title games offered by Martin Mueller (see |
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| 102 | http://www.g0ertz.de/go/ for links) |
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| 103 | |
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| 104 | On the other hand, there are commercial game collections. |
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| 105 | Let me particularly recommend the GoGoD database compiled |
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| 106 | by John Fairbairn and T Mark Hall, which includes more than |
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| 107 | 13.500 games, and is reasonably priced. I use it myself and |
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| 108 | am very satisfied with it. |
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| 109 | |
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| 110 | * Speed: |
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| 111 | The algorithm that is used is more or less straightforward. |
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| 112 | Nevertheless, for the moment it seems to be good enough. See |
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| 113 | the tutorial for a more detailed description. (If you have ideas |
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| 114 | how to speed things up, I'm certainly interested in hearing |
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| 115 | them ...) |
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| 116 | |
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| 117 | Some samples, with the GoGoD database consisting of 13841 |
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| 118 | games, on my laptop with a PentiumIII mobile processor with |
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| 119 | 800MHz, and Windows 2000: |
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| 120 | |
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| 121 | Pattern: empty (A) as (B) as low chin. |
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| 122 | board above below fuseki |
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| 123 | |
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| 124 | 3sec 2sec 5sec 2sec |
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| 125 | |
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| 126 | Here pattern (B) is |
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| 127 | |
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| 128 | XO |
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| 129 | OX |
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| 130 | |
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| 131 | which produces a *lot* of matches (137051 hits, to be precise). |
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| 132 | |
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| 133 | * The name 'Kombilo' is the Esperanto word for comb, and since |
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| 134 | 'going through the game records with a fine-toothed comb' |
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| 135 | is a suitable description of what the program does, it seemed |
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| 136 | quite fitting. I hope that it's also easy to remember. |
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| 137 | Pronunciation: 'i' as 'ee' in see, and the stress is on the 'i'. |
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| 138 | |
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| 139 | |
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