This is the documentation for uliGo 0.3 - a program to practice Go problems. It was written by Ulrich Goertz (u@g0ertz.de). uliGo is published under the GNU General Public License (see the file 'gpl.txt' or look at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). This program comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.
From now on I assume that you installed the program, and that the main window pops up when you start it. (Otherwise, read the section about installing uliGo first.)
The first thing you have to do is to load a problem collection. Some example collections come with uliGo; see below how you can create your own ones. So, go to the 'File' menu, and select 'Open problem collection'. Then choose one of the sgf files that you are shown (they are in the 'sgf' subdirectory which should automatically be selected). Later, the program automatically loads the collection you used last. Of course you can always load another collection with the 'Open problem collection' command in the File menu.
I think that the user interface is pretty self-explanatory, so I suggest that you just play around a bit with it: press the right arrow to see the first problem. The problem (randomly chosen from the database) will be displayed, the stop clock will be started (by default you have 2 min 30 sec to find the complete answer), and you can play your move. The indicator above the clock (and the 'cursor') shows whose turn it is. After you enter your move, the program automatically replies (unless your suggested move was wrong and no refutation is contained in the database). Then enter the next move ... when the correct solution is reached, the program shows a 'solved' indicator on the left. After entering a wrong move, you can still try to solve the problem, but you cannot get credit for it anymore, of course; instead of the green "solved" you will see a blue one when you get to a correct solution (similarly after using undo, the 'show solution' mode or the 'try variation' mode).
With the right arrow you can go to the next problem (this works at any stage). Note that the arrow buttons do not serve to navigate within the SGF file (use UNDO and HINT, respectively, to do that), but to go to the next problem, or back to the previous one.
Alternatively, if you choose 'Replay game', you can load any SGF file, and replay it by guessing the next move.
This button discards the current problem, and shows the next one.
This works at any stage, no matter if you solved the current problem
correctly or not, or if you tried some variation etc.
Of course, some problem collection must be open; otherwise nothing
happens.
With this button, you can go back to the previous problem. Clicking it more than once goes back further,
like with the 'back' button in a web browser.
Note though that you can't go back and forth: the 'next' button will not go back to the problem you came
from, but will give you a new problem.
Go back to the beginning of the problem, and start over.
If you are at the beginning of the problem already,
this sets up the problem again at a (possibly) different position and with different colors.
Give a hint, i.e. show the next move (and the answer). Using the Hint button results in
this problem not being counted in the statistics, i.e. it is neither a wrong nor a correct answer.
This shows a solution of the current problem. (The button is
disabled if you already solved the problem correctly yourself.)
You can choose between two modes for displaying the solution
(in the Options menu: 'Show solution mode'):
Using the Show Solution button results in this problem not being counted in the statistics, i.e. it is neither a wrong nor a correct answer.
At any point, you can press this button, and then play out some
variation of your own, e.g. to convince yourself that/why something
does not work. Use the Undo button to undo a move. As long as
you are in the 'Try variation' mode, the 'Show solution' mode
is disabled - it wouldn't make sense to display the solution with
your additional stones on the board. Press 'Try variation' again
to leave this mode and remove all the stones of your variation.
Once you enter this mode, you cannot get any credit for the current
problem anymore.
With this button you can undo the last two moves (the answer to your
last move and your last move) or the last move (if there was no
answer to your last move or in the Show solution/navigate mode
or in 'Try variation' mode).
If you use the undo feature, you cannot get any credit for the
current problem anymore.
The clock starts when you press the 'next problem' button. The default time is 150 seconds. You can change it by a right mouse click on the clock or by choosing the 'change clock settings' command in the options menu. This only works when the clock is not running.
Set the clock to 0 seconds to turn it off.
When the time for the current problem is over, it is counted as a wrong answer.
Apart from the database, the program maintains a list of all problems, together with information how often each problem has been asked already, and with which results (this list is stored in the xyz.dat file, where xyz is the name of the SGF file).
When you request the next problem, a problem is chosen randomly from the first half of the list; problems from the first third are a little bit more likely to be chosen then others.
When you answer a problem correctly, it will be moved to the very end of the list. So it will take some time until that problem can come up again. When you give a wrong answer, the problem will be moved to a random location in the second half (more precisely: in the 4th sixth) of the list; so this problem cannot appear again immediately, but it could after a relatively short time, and the more problems you answer correctly, the more likely it is that you will asked problems that you got wrong once for a second time.
You can erase the information on your previous answers by deleting the .dat file corresponding to a database. A new .dat file (in which the order of problems is that of the SGF file) will be created when you open the database.
(In case you installed uliGo system-wide under Unix, the .dat files are in the .uligo subdirectory of your home directory. See the file install.txt for more details.)
The format used for the problem database is just the SGF format. So in order to make your own database, just put a bunch of SGF games in one single file. Some conventions (explained below) have to be followed, but I think they are much or less common sense. So probably you can just enter a problem into any SGF editor, and everything will work.
The following conventions have to be satisfied:
One final remark: since every move that is not in the SGF file is considered wrong, it is desirable to put every correct solution into the file. Unfortunately, it is easy to miss some alternative moves, especially after some moves have already been played. Certainly there are some correct alternatives missing in the problems that come with uliGo; so don't take it too seriously if your answer is counted as wrong although it is right ...
One fun way to study go is to replay professional games by guessing the next move. You can load an SGF file with "Replay game" in the File menu. The stop clock will then be replaced by a few buttons and a frame with a small "go board".
With the buttons, you can choose if you want to guess only black or only white moves, or both. Clicks on the board will be interpreted as guesses - if you managed to guess the next move in the current SGF file, that move is played; otherwise no stone is placed on the board.
In the frame below the buttons you get some feedback on your guesses. If your guess is right, it displays a green square (and the move is played on the board). If the guess is wrong, it displays a red rectangle; the rectangle is roughly centered at the position of the next move, and the closer your guess was, the smaller, and more accurately positioned is that rectangle. Furthermore the number of correct guesses and the number of all guesses, as well as the success percentage are given.
If you just can't find the next move, you can always use the 'HINT' button, and the move will be played out. You can restart the game with the middle button in the first row.
Load a new problem database. A database just consists of several SGF files. Some example databases are included in the uliGo distribution. See below for more information how to create your own databases.
Open the statistics window. It shows the name of the current database, how many problems are in it, how many problems the program has asked you to answer, and how many right/wrong answers you have given.
Delete all information about problems done so far, and about correct and wrong answers, and reload the problem collection from disk. In particular, this should be used after making changes to the SGF file with your problem collection.
Quit the program.
In order to make the board and stones look more like 'in real life', by default the stones are not placed precisely on the intersections, but by a small, random amount off. On a smaller board this doesn't well (and maybe some people don't like it at all?), so you can disable this fuzzy placement.
Disables the shaded stone cursor which shows where the next move would be if you clicked at the current position.
In order to make sure that you don't just learn one particular problem, but rather a shape, uliGo randomly alters the position of the problem on the go board, and also the color of the stones. Because the latter could cause problems if your database contains comments referring to the colors ('good for black', 'white to move'), you can force uliGo to use the colors of the SGF file by disabling this option.
With this checkbutton, you can switch off the automatical mirroring/rotating of the problems. That might be useful, for example, if there are comments referring to the "upper left" or the "right side".
Swich between animate and navigate mode. See the description of the 'Show solution' button above.
Choose the speed for replaying the solution (in animate mode).
Change the maximal time for solving a problem. You can achieve the same by right clicking on the clock. (Also see below: The stop clock)
Choose if the problems should be presented in
The mode, together with the current position in 'sequential order, don't record results' mode, is stored in the .dat file; so basically each problem collection has its own mode. If you check the "use as default" option, then the current mode will be chosen for other collections which do not yet have a .dat file (i.e. you use then for the first time) or have a .dat file from version 0.1.
Some basic information about uliGo.
Open this documentation in a web browser.
The uliGo license.
That's it for the moment, I think. Feel free to contact me (at uligo@g0ertz.de) if you have any questions, or - in particular - if you find any bugs in the program.
The program is written in Python, a high-level interpreted programming language. If you are using Windows, you can either use the uliGo installer which contains everything you need to run uliGo, or you install Python separately. On other systems, you need to install Python before you can run uliGo. Any version better than 2.0 should do; I tested the program with Python 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. If you have to install Python, you should get the current version 2.2.
Te easiest way is to use the installer. Since it contains the Python interpreter, there is no need to install Python separately.
If you want to install Python separately, download the Python installer for Windows from the Python website. It will be very easy to install it. Then download the uligo03-win.zip file and unpack it. You should then be able to run uliGo by double-clicking the "uligo.pyw" file, or from the command line with "c:\python22\python uligo.pyw".
It is likely that Python is already included in your distribution. It is also easy to build it yourself with the source from the Python website. But be sure to install the Tkinter module which is needed for the GUI, too; look at the in the README file coming with Python for instructions how to do that.
Once you have Python working, just download and unpack the uliGo file (uligo03.tar.gz). It will create a subdirectory called uligo03 in the directory where you unzip it, and all files needed for uliGo will be placed in that subdirectory. Then just start uligo.py: change into the corresponding directory, and type 'python uligo.py'. (You can also make 'uligo.py' executable, possibly change the path in its first line to point to your Python installation, and run it as 'uligo.py'.)
You can also install uliGo system-wide; see below.
Python is available for many operating systems, so you should also be able to run uliGo. See the Python website for more information.
Basically, you should just install uliGo 0.3 from scratch, and delete the old version (Make sure that you don't delete any sgf files with problems ...). In particular, you should not use the files uligo.def and uligo.opt from version 0.1 or 0.2 with version 0.3 (these files contain the default problem collection and the saved options, respectively).
You can use the .dat files from uliGo 0.1, though (these files contain the information about right/wrong answers etc.; for each SGF file that you used with uliGo there is a corresponding .dat file). Just copy the .dat files from the sgf subdirectory of uligo01 to the sgf subdirectory of uligo03. (In case you installed uliGo system-wide under Unix, it is slightly more complicated; please see below.)
To install uligGo system-wide (in /usr/local/share, for instance), proceed as follows:
Put the uliGo files in /usr/local/share/uligo03 (if you put them somewhere else, you have to adapt the unixinst.py script accordingly).
Carefully read, and -if necessary- edit the script unixinst.py . (I think that you probably will not want to change much.) Basically, the unixinst.py script writes a 'global' uligo.def file (in the uligo03 directory) which tells uligo to look for individual .def files (in $HOME/.uligo ) when it is started. So for every user who uses uligo, a subdirectory called .uligo will be created in the user's home directory. In this directory, the individual .def file (which stores the path and name of the SGF file used last), the .opt file (which stored the saved options), and the .dat files (which store the number of correct/wrong answers for each problem in the corresponding SGF file) are stored. In order to avoid name conflicts between .dat files for .sgf files in different directories, the path is shadowed in the .uligo directory: for a .sgf file in /usr/local/share/uligo/sgf, for example, the corresponding .dat file is in $HOME/.uligo/usr/local/share/uligo/sgf.
Furthermore the unixinst.py script creates a link in /usr/local/bin, pointing to uligo.py.
After you edited the unixinst.py script, execute it with 'python unixinst.py'. The only other thing you might have to do (if your python interpreter is not in /usr/bin), is to change the very first line of the file uligo.py, which must contain the location of the python interpreter, so that uligo can be started by 'uligo.py'.
| May 2003: | uliGo 0.3, with a few new features, and a Windows installer. |
| June 2001: | uliGo 0.2: some minor bugfixes, and the option to change the order in which the problems are presented (random vs. sequential) |
| May 2001: | uliGo 0.1 is published. |
| April 2001: | Started writing uliGo. |