thank you Robert, Petr and Michael for sharing; i have to admit i was surprised by the number of joseki tutors out there; i vaguely remember it was all started by smartgo, wasn't it? btw, does smartgo run properly under wine on Linux?
I am bemused by josekipedia's use of vox populi to vote for the "ideal" move; in this respect, it's a human-world version of Monte-Carlo :) PS i don't know about you, but i only want to see which choices are good - i don't care about the bad choices, i can make those by myself! just imagine if all the joseki tool tutor creators were to get together with some usability experts and jointly produce an offline Multivarsity [1] tutor with satnav-style voiceovers instead of text that could be downloaded and integrated into a playing client, so klutzes like me could learn as we do, instead of doing and learning being separate activities, or clumsily having to flip between one window and another (perhaps it would be easier with two screens, keyboards and mice, one in each hand like a pianist!). back in the Mediaeval days, there were no schools whipping kids like slave-sheep into mindset corrals, and youngsters learned trade skills by serving apprenticeships in a meaningful environment, learning as they were doing. i was one of the last lucky few, having been able to earn the princely sum of 325 quid pa as a programming apprentice at age 16 [aside: Marconi Research Labs Automation Division that hired me rented me out to Radar Division (the contract holder) for 5 grand pa - by the end of the project i was engaged on, Radar Division had made a loss whereas Automation Division had made a profit.... but i can't take all the credit for that! :) ] when i look at what has happened to the education system in the last 30 years, i cannot but weep for the young at how capitalism and competition forcing mother and daughter to work for the yankee dollar has turned the school systems of the world from a service to the poor to a disservice of servitude for all but the rich in which kids are treated like stones on the board being played by players who only want to beat each other at their game of trying to be number 1 on some arbitrary ladder of arbitrary metrics derived from arbitrary marking of arbitrary examinations on arbitrary content. perhaps computers can come to the rescue in education as well as in Go, as more and more routine operations - such as choosing a joseki - can be automated. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSL-TuMlQZo&index=9&list=PL4y5WtsvtduozO-9oG5nZZI8IPUD6EDif Addendum: edited copy of my previously posted functionality wishlist, for consideration by tutor programmers: the thing about josekis is not where you start, nor even where you step, but where you end up i'd love to have a joseki tutor sitting inside a game playing client which could assist me by offerring the following information display and navigation functions: - click on last move to initiate a matchup with the tutor and start an overlay flip-through by spacebar of just the endpoints of the main lines of variations starting from there, so i can see which variation would suit the game position i am in. that way i can start to learn where josekis end instead of just where they start and how they branch. the endpoints of the main lines of alternate lines can be viewed by spacebar after navigating: - right/left arrows crawl forward/back along a branch - up/down arrows jump up/down to the start of the next variation up or down (think of the tree as being laid out sideways), regardless of wherever you are on a branch. - Enter on first move of variation being shown to make its move on the gameboard, - esc to return to own play mode. i am unaware of any existing client/editor/tutor that has these variation visualisation and navigation buttons in just the way i have described. usability is inversely proportional to programmability; my suggestions would make life easy for users but be a bit of work for a developer. _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list Computer-go@computer-go.org http://computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
