Little Go 1.6.0 released
Little Go 1.6.0 has been published on February 27 2021 on the App Store. This is the first release in almost 2 years, and it’s packed with improvements. You can read the release notes in the App Store update notes or on the GitHub release page.
1.6.0 is a landmark in the version history of Little Go because the app now incorporates its own SGF parser instead of relying on Fuego to read and write SGF data. The core piece of software is SGFC, the SGF Syntax Checker & Converter. A big thank you to Arno Hollosi, the author of this tool, for making it available under a free license, and for helping with integrating it into Little Go.
One important consequence of having its own SGF parser is that whenever Little Go and Fuego have to synchronize their state, Little Go is now always the origin and Fuego is always the replica of any state changes. The synchronization problems that have plagued the app since its early days should now finally belong to the past.
At least as important as the eradication of sync problems is that the SGF parsing capability is an enabler for other features that until now have been impossible to implement. Here’s a quick list of related feature requests from the GitHub issue tracker:
- Issue 349: Display additional markup taken from SGF data
- Issue 339: Display additional information about moves
- Issue 310: Add Go problem solving mode
- Issue 267: Add user notes to each move.
- Issue 144: Game Info screen should display information from
GoGameDocument - Issue 27: Free handicap placement
I hope to tackle at least one of these features for the next release. When that will happen is still undecided, though.