Life In 19x19

The usual heads-up. I have just passed "Today We Have a Splendid Feast" to Anders Kierulf at SmartGo today (6 Feb) and so this marvellous little work will soon be available to delight everyone.

Although perhaps best known for his mind-blowing Igo Hatsuyoron, the Meijin Inseki wrote several other works. This particular one, Yoshin Teiki, is now mostly lost, but if ever a complete version were to surface, it would merit consideration as replacing even Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway To All Marvels) as the most important go book ever written.

What is special about it is this: it is a tsumego course in which the Meijin, Dosetsu, takes you through nakade and seki problems (the only two surviving portions) in not just a graduated way from beginner level to super-dan, but in a comprehensive way, showing every wrinkle you are ever likely to meet in that kind of problem. The long nakade section even shows that Dosetsu understood the value of spaced repetition. The seki section is short but thorough - sekis involving double kos, double double kos, triple kos and other beasts to delight the rules mavens, but of course all the usual sekis. And because this is Dosetsu at work, there are many delightfully creative and humorous touches - such as a double nakade!

I have presented all the 135 problems and full solutions in interactive format, and have added a longish introduction describing Dosetsu and the history of the book.

As far as I know it is the first time it has appeared in book form since the 17th century.

John Fairbairn wrote:The usual heads-up. I have just passed "Today We Have a Splendid Feast" to Anders Kierulf at SmartGo today (6 Feb) and so this marvellous little work will soon be available to delight everyone.

[..]

I have presented all the 135 problems and full solutions in interactive format, and have added a longish introduction describing Dosetsu and the history of the book.

Wow.

Can’t wait to see it.

As far as I know it is the first time it has appeared in book form since the 17th century.

Heh, “in book form” … fast forward ~400 yrs, omitting the past 50 years of increasingly digitalized printing, directly to interactive form on a tablet, this is quite cool.


Can’t wait. Oh, I said that before.


Greetz, Tom

Looks very interesting! I'll certainly keep an eye out for this book.

I'll look forward to the book when it's on a format I can use. Congrats on another great publication though.

oren wrote:I'll look forward to the book when it's on a format I can use.

Shouldn't that be "want to" not "can?"


Thank you very much John, a very nice gift to the community.

Boidhre wrote:

oren wrote:I'll look forward to the book when it's on a format I can use.

Shouldn't that be "want to" not "can?"

Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on an apple device so that they can spend more money on a program so that they can read a book they may or may not be able to access in the future.

skydyr wrote:

Boidhre wrote:

oren wrote:I'll look forward to the book when it's on a format I can use.

Shouldn't that be "want to" not "can?"

Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on an apple device so that they can spend more money on a program so that they can read a book they may or may not be able to access in the future.

This is part of a long running conversation between myself and oren about this.

John Fairbairn wrote:SmartGo [...] everyone. [...] to delight the rules mavens

Not everyone and not every rules maven, because SmartGo books work only on iOS devices, according to http://gobooks.com/index.html

skydyr wrote:

Boidhre wrote:

oren wrote:I'll look forward to the book when it's on a format I can use.

Shouldn't that be "want to" not "can?"

Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on an apple device so that they can spend more money on a program so that they can read a book they may or may not be able to access in the future.

Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on bigger bookshelf so that they can spend more money on physical books so they can read a book they may or may not be able to acces in the future because... Do I need to explain to you how many possible ways there are to lose/destroy physical book?

Ten years ago I lost my entire 1000 books collection because I moved to another city and was not able to transfer these books. So please stop bitching about e-book format.

lobotommy wrote:So please stop bitching about e-book format.

I don't think anyone did.

As far as I understood the problem was with the proprietary and restrictive nature of the format the ebook was offered in.
I suspect there would be no such complaints if the book was made available in epub format, for example.

leichtloeslich wrote:As far as I understood the problem was with the proprietary and restrictive nature of the format the ebook was offered in.
I suspect there would be no such complaints if the book was made available in epub format, for example.

SmartGo books format specification is not a mystery, Anders made it public. I'm sure some other developer could take it and create similar app for windows, android, linux etc.

leichtloeslich wrote:

lobotommy wrote:So please stop bitching about e-book format.

I don't think anyone did.

As far as I understood the problem was with the proprietary and restrictive nature of the format the ebook was offered in.
I suspect there would be no such complaints if the book was made available in epub format, for example.

Sure, but given the prevalence of piracy even within the small go community you'd have to be pretty crazy to set up a business releasing go books in epub or any other similar format. No?

Boidhre wrote:

leichtloeslich wrote:

lobotommy wrote:So please stop bitching about e-book format.

I don't think anyone did.

As far as I understood the problem was with the proprietary and restrictive nature of the format the ebook was offered in.
I suspect there would be no such complaints if the book was made available in epub format, for example.

Sure, but given the prevalence of piracy even within the small go community you'd have to be pretty crazy to set up a business releasing go books in epub or any other similar format. No?

I have no idea. Robert Jasiek seemed to make the contrary argument in his thread on ebooks. It may be that the experience varies by publisher/author/book.

skydyr wrote:Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on an apple device so that they can spend more money on a program so that they can read a book they may or may not be able to access in the future.

I’ve been a user of Apple products since dinosaurs walked on earth, simply because of their superior quality, yet I understand and empathize with this. We never know when one company may swim belly-up, and then we may be bereft of everything we paid for. I for one have, in the past three decades, paid hundreds and thousands of Deutschmark and Euro for hard- and software that later was abandoned (NeXTcube, anybody? ), and this is not because I’m dumb (hopefully) but because I WORK with this stuff and had to be an early adopter for many years, if only, sometimes, to know about stuff.

Anyway … SmartGo Books is one of the finest products out there, and I’ve heard people say they purchased their iSomething only for this. And iOS gadgets are becoming more affordable, and if you count in all that you can do with these things, some day you might find it worth the investment. Time ain’t going backwards any time soon, even though I sometimes wish for it (having worked with computers for 30+ yrs now, I sometimes dread all things digital, and it’s getting worse).

Greetings, Tom

All this ebook, nonsense is off topic. Apple produces a proprietary product, you buy the product knowing full and well most people won't support it. Expecting other people to support your product because you paid the premium for, proprietary-kludged-non-commodity-designer-looks, which most of us don't have, is insulting.