[OLPC-Games] Play Go issues for laptop

[Andrés Ambrois]

On Friday 10 October 2008 06:49:58 Edward Cherlin wrote:
> I am a go player and programmer, and I have been involved in PlayGo
> from the beginning. I am also the one communicating with AGA about
> PlayGo and about our plans for multilingual content for teaching Go.
> Some years ago I worked on a multilingual go glossary in Unicode,
> adding various writing systems to the ASCII original.
>
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 9:53 PM, Paul Barchilon <shimari at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Hello to all who are working on this project, and thank you for the great
> > service you are providing to kids around the world!  I am the Vice
> > President of the American Go Foundation, a charitable organization that
> > provides free Go equipment to children and teachers in schools.  I spend
> > a great deal of time teaching children, and am an active Go player and
> > organizer on the national scene.  It has come to my attention that there
> > are a number of problems with the Play Go program, and also that a set of
> > rules that are appropriate for children may well be needed.
> >
> > I am not a computer programmer, and do not have one of the laptops, so I
> > haven't actually seen the Play Go program at work.

  Hello Paul and Edward!

  I've written most of the code in PlayGo, following Gerard J. Cerchio's 
initial implementation, so its very encouraging to see so much enthusiasm 
behind it! 

  While I'm not a great Go player, (I do think it's a fantastic game, just 
haven't found a good sparring partner :)). I believe it's a great way to teach 
analytical thinking to young kids in a fun way. Therefore, feedback such as 
this, from knowledgeable people like you, is paramount to its improvement. 
Thank you!

>
> You can download the latest version. I'll get you instructions offline.
>
> > I did ask a child who
> > has one, and plays Go, to tell me how it seemed.  He may have an older
> > version of the software, but if his observations are correct it sounds
> > like there are some serious issues.  I would be very glad to help solve
> > some of these problems if you would like some input.  As I said, I can't
> > program, but I can tell whoever is writing the software what the problems
> > are.
>
> Thank you.

  Great! Thanks for testing! Perhaps you could encourage people to try the 
latest version of the activity. You can find it at 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All . I would love to hear about this 
issues in more detail. 

> >  Please feel free to contact me directly at shimari at comcast.net.  If you
> > would like a rule set designed for children, please let me know and we
> > will be happy to write one for you.
>
> We will be very interested to hear from you on this.

  Perhaps we could continue this discussion using this list? It would be 
better for other people that can contribute *hint hint*. 

> > You can see one example of our approach to
> > this on our youth go website, which is here:
> >  http://tigersmouth.org/viewpage.php?page_id=8

  Sweet. Now that the Help activity is being shipped, perhaps we could include 
this work in a help bundle for PlayGo. Is this work under a free license?

> > Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from whoever is programming Play
> > Go.

  Thank you!

> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Paul Barchilon,
> > American Go Foundation
> >
> > http://tigersmouth.org
> > http://agfgo.org

-- 
  -Andrés