EasyGo on iOS - review

[xiangz]

Just let you konw that the version 1.1 was just released, please check it out at appstore.

Change Log:
V1.1
Enhancements:
• Performance tuning: the time takes to import games, batch delete has been reduced significantly.
• Sort game/problem by black name, white name, game name, date
• Shuffle game/problem(especially useful for problem practice)
• Search game/problem by black name, white name, game name, date
• For problem practice, randomly select one of right variations to test whether you know all the response to the opponent's move instead of always use the first variation
• For problem practice, the "next/restart" button on the board is now semi-transparent
• (iPad Only) Added a full screen game edit view for landscape mode, two finger tap the tree view to activate. Supports two layout schemes, two finger tap the tree view to toggle.
• Add a variation table view to complement the tree view, node name(if any) will also be showed
• Add an option to toggle the showing of next move marker: always show, never show, show only there are variations
• Add a button to back to the most recent branch point
• Add a copy to clipboard button in show SGF window
• In game view settings, removed three sliders to adjust view size, now you can drag the resize handle to adjust the size of board, comment, tree, variation table view.
• During import, if tap cancel button, a confirm window will show, you have the options to continue importing, or keep the current imported file or just delete all the imported files.
• In Version 1.0, when importing big files, the UI is not responsive for a while after tap the import button, this was fixed in Version1.1

Bug fixes:

• If input some special characters that can't be handled by current encoding, after saving the game, the whole content of the game will be empty, which will also lead to crash if scroll to the game next time
• Batch move destination should exclude the sub folders of current folder, otherwise data will be lost.
• If the game name ended with a dot and a white space, then the file name in the exported zip file will not be ended with .sgf
• On iPad, In grid view, when tap the sort button second time, the sort option window will open again
• On iPad, in game edit view, if you tap action button, then Open In, then tap action button again, the open In window won't be dismissed.
• When open a big game, such as kogo's joseki dictionary, the app might crash. The reason is that the current approach to draw tree view will demand a lot of system memory. For version 1.1, the tree view for big game is disabled. The tree view drawing will be optimized in future versions.
• The next move marker will overwrite any markup at the same position

Problems update:
The solutions for the following problems have been corrected
Basics - Oiotoshi - No. 43
Basics - Capturing race -No 40

Misc:
Change iOS requirements to 4.0+

[RBerenguel]

Just downloaded it!

[msgreg]

If you also download iZip (free, ad supported) you can import Kogo's Joseki dictionary without connecting to a computer.

Click the big "Download" button on the Kogo site. Then "Open In" iZip. Then once in iZip, extract all, navigate to the sgf file and "Open In" Easy Go.

Works on iPhone 3GS, iOS 5.

It should work in less than 20 seconds. If it fails, you may need to kill all the background tasks (double click button to go list of tasks, the hold an icon until they jiggle, MAKE SURE YOU'RE IN THE TASK SWITCHER, then remove each one). Then iZip "open in easygo" works.

[xiangz]

msgreg, thank you for your update.

By the way, EasyGo can handle zip file directly via Open In. Generally no need to use utilities like iZip. For example, you can download(http://www.gokgs.com/archives.jsp) your games played within one month at KGS directly in mobile safari and import to EasyGo easily. Just select the zip link, download all the games played within a month in a single zip file, and transport the zip file to EasyGo via Open In. KGS organizes the games by folders, a folder per day, which is not conveninent if you have only a few games played. You can search the games by your name (including sub folders), then in batch edit, select all, and move to a single folder.

kgs-archive.PNG (22.85 KiB) Viewed 16453 times

The iphone screen is small, currently two finger swipe up to toggle full screen is not easy to use. And zooming is not continuous. For joseky study, a zoom covering about 13 lines would be great. I will address these issues in future versions. Also, I'm thinking about a full screen landscape mode for iphone, that is when you put iphone in landscape mode, it's in full screen automatically.

Please do me a favor to review this new version at appstore, thanks.

[msgreg]

When you click on a zip file in Safari and "Open In" EasyGo, EasyGo says "Zip File... was just copied to itunes share folder under Inbox folder, please import it manually."

That's why I posted the "workaround" using iZip so you can import directly without using a computer. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious?

Also, after following the iZip "Open In" instructions above, I see the SGF under My Games in EasyGo listed as "(null)-(null)-Kogo'..."

I'm not sure if that name is caused by iZip or EasyGo. It seems to open and display fine. I'm still playing around with it.

[xiangz]

after seeing "... please import it manually", please just tap the import button in the bottom toolbar(the third button), then tap the blue button at the right of the Inbox folder to go to Inbox folder, then select the zip file, and tap import button at bottom toolbar to start importing. You can also refer the brief help file in the app(tap import in the top navigation bar)

Where did you find the (null)-(null) ? Could you send a screenshot to my email? Mostly likely, it's due to the black name and white name are blank, however the joseki sgf file showned fine on my iphone4, ipad2 with ios 4.3.

[msgreg]

Screenshot sent. Only happens in grid display.

please just tap the import button in the bottom toolbar(the third button), then tap the blue button at the right of the Inbox folder to go to Inbox folder, then select the zip file, and tap import button at bottom toolbar to start importing. You can also refer the brief help file in the app(tap import in the top navigation bar)

Ahhh. The import button is only on the list view, not the grid view. That's why I missed it. Seems to work fine. Once I reposition the SGF at the "top" of the folder hierarchy, and thus the folder the import command creates is now empty, how do I delete the empty folder?

Thanks!

Edit: to answer my own question: when viewing "My Games" in list view, you can "Batch Edit" using the button on the bottom right, select the empty folder, then hit the "Delete" button on the bottom middle. Works great.

[RBerenguel]

Crashes on boot in my iTouch 2nd gen, after trying to open Kogo's joseki. Restarting the iPod has not helped. In my iPad it works perfectly well though.

EDIT: not easygo's fault but iTunes fault. It has corrupted all apps.

[Actorios]

I've started recording go problems with Easygo and I must say I've been very very satisfied. Once you get used to the interface, it's getting nice and easy to record, edit, sort and review problems.
With the fact that it shows variations for the other color + color/orientation change, it is the perfect tool to "hardwire" go problems solutions.

I did notice though two issues while using it for this purpose:
1/ the comments are not amended when changing stone color: any statement for Black/black should be replaced by White/white and vice versa (Though, I realized that by not adding any hint, it was doing me good)
2/ when a problem is dedicated to White, the software tend to place stones as it was Black starting. It's ok if you start to select White but for example, if you erase the node, the setting gets back to Black even if you have a single white stone icon selected (hope you understand what I mean).

I'm really glad of the last update... Easygo made it to my Top5 Go App !

[xiangz]

Hi Actorios,

Sorry for the late response. I had trouble accessing L19 yesterday.

I fully understand two issues you mentioned, and they will be addressed in next version.

[RBerenguel]

I have written a review of EasyGo in whatsoniphone.com. Of course this review is aimed at the general public, and I didn't go deep in features because 99% of the readers won't know about Go enough to get them, if you have any question about what I don't say, don't hesitate to ask here and I'll try to answer

[SpongeBob]

So how does EasyGo compare to GoGrinder? They seem to have overlapping functionality, especially with regards to problem solving?

[RBerenguel]

I have not checked GoGrinder, since I found that creating problem sets, uploading and then downloading is not only a hassle, but also prone to problems: what if the server side breaks? EasyGo does not need this workaround, since it can work with local files (sent via iTunes file sharing, via mail or via "open with") without problems.

[SpongeBob]

I have not checked GoGrinder, since I found that creating problem sets, uploading and then downloading is not only a hassle, but also prone to problems: what if the server side breaks? EasyGo does not need this workaround, since it can work with local files (sent via iTunes file sharing, via mail or via "open with") without problems.

That has its benefits, true. On the other hand, I like the idea that I can exchange problem sets with other people - without the worry, that the files will spread across the internet. They will stay within the program.

[RBerenguel]

Indeed, both ways to see it are valid To give a really meaningful comparison I'd need to test GoGrinder... Maybe I'll have to get it then