Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:41:52 -0400
From: fotland@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: 



I agree with all of your reasons for tightly specifying the fields.  And
I think that FF[4] should tightly specify the fields.  Many Faces of Go
will generate DT and RE in the correct format when it creates the fields
itself.  So I am not suggesting you change the FF[4] spec.

My problem is with importing old sgf files, and allowing the user to
enter dates and results as he likes.  I've looked at a lot of old SGF
files (I have thousands), and the date and result formats are quite
varied.  I don't think I can write a parser to reliably convert them.

This leaves no choice but to move them all to the comment field.  Some
examples:

6/8/94:  is this june 8 or august 6?

1932 5 4,6  (a 3 day game)

10 febriari 1956

1993-10-3 to 5

May 6th and 12th, 1941

When someone reads an existing sgf file, I want to present him with all
the data in the file, so I don't want to partially parse the dates and
lose information.  I want to put the date information in the 'date' field
of the game info dialog box, so he can find it.  I don't want to waste a
lot of screen real estate by making the game comment field a large,
multiline field.  The game info dialog box is already huge.

I haven't seen any sgf files with a GC[] entry.  I suspect that some
sgf viewers don't display GC.

But if I put sgf DT data in the date field of the dialog box, it has to
be presented as text.  This means that the user is not constrained to
enter dates in ISO format (and Americans never use ISO format, so they
won't).  So I have the same parsing problem for data entry.  Presenting
ISO dates in the american style is not the issue.

I don't like deliberately violating the spec either.  That's why I ask
what people think of me using FF[3] or FF[4].

I force komi and handicap to be numbers on input.  I ignore TM,WL,BL
on input.

-David