Smart Game Format

From Free net encyclopedia

The Smart Game Format, or SGF, is a computer file format used for storing records of board games including:

• Go
• Lines of Action
• Backgammon
• Hex
• Amazons
• Octi
• Gess

Go is the game that is most commonly represented in this format.

SGF uses a tree-based representation of the game to store information; the tree structure makes the addition of variations simple. It is also text-based instead of binary for the sake of portability.

Issues

• Language: Go is most widely played in China, Japan, and Korea, but the SGF format has no way of specifying different translations for text.

• Problems: Go problems are a very common teaching tool, but there is no single clear way to represent go problems in SGF.

• Metadata: Only a limited, fixed set of metadata can be present, for example, SGF has rank fields, but on way to represent the ranking system in use.

See also

• Portable Game Notation, a common computer format for recording games of Chess.

External links

• Specification of the Smart Game Format