[computer-go] RGN - (R)eadable (G)o (N)otation

[David Ongaro]

Istvan Soos wrote:

>Is a human readable format really needed? I think most of the developers
>read or write data for transferring or archiving the game descriptions,
>and not for human browsing - there are many program to do that better.
>  
>
Good point. That's why I can't see the whole point of this discussion at 
all. If I need a readable version of a SGF File I just do a "sgf2misc 
-to sf game.sgf" and thats it. If one just wants to translate the 
coordinates, a short sed script would do. A good text viewer can even 
make theese translations in a transparent way.

The reasons why SGF is a text format, are well explained by Anders 
Kierulf in an early proposion for a standard Go format (see 
http://www.daogo.org/download/computer_go_02.pdf), e.g. there are lesser 
problems when sending SGF by mail. (And there are also good reasons for 
using just letters instead of numbers and letters.) That doesn't mean it 
must or is intended to be human readable (in this respect it isn't so 
really bad either though).

David Ongaro