RE: [computer-go] SGF parsers

["Mark Boon" <tesuji@xxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: computer-go-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:computer-go-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Paul Pogonyshev
> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 14:03
> To: tesujisoftware@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; computer-go
> Subject: Re: [computer-go] SGF parsers
>
>
> Mark Boon wrote:
> > I just realise now how impractical that would be in relation to
> XML though.
> > If the next move is a child of the current move, then the XML
> is going to
> > have the closing tag of this move after the closing tag of the
> next move.
> > So a 300 move sequence would end in 300 </move> closing tags.
> So I'll have
> > to think of something else...
>
> I don't see how this is particularly impractical.  Basically, using XML is
> impractical on its own unless you either want to use an existing
> parser (not
> critical since there are SGF parsers available) or want to make
> data available
> in generally-understood format (personally, I don't see much
> advantage of XML
> here, I can't think of a useful task that a general XML program
> can perform
> with go game records.)  300 closing tags is just a side-effect of
> using XML.
>

Maybe I'm being a bit of a purist here. First of all I think it's
impractical because it destroys human readability. Second, I think the
children of a move-node should be data related to this node, like comments
and board-marks. Variations will need to be indicated differently then, as
it means the tree-structure of the DOM-tree cannot easily be used to store
variations. You'll probably need something like a <variation> tag to
indicate a variation on the previous move or so.

You say SGF parser are available. So why is it then that just about everyone
on this list seems to have built his own?

As to performance and memory considerations: since SGF isn't going to be
used while playing or other computer-Go related tasks, I don't care much. If
parsing a 100Mb file is going to take an hour, then that's fine too as I
don't see why you'd need to do it more than once ever, after which you stuff
the data in a database. I don't consider SGF as a proper data-storage
medium, more as a data-transfer format.

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