Kombilo manual

Installation

Linux

The following instructions cover the installation of Kombilo under Ubuntu Linux (current version, i.e. 11.10). If you use another flavor of Linux and are somewhat familiar with it, you will easily adapt them.

Quick start: installation on a Ubuntu system

With the following commands you can install Kombilo on a Ubuntu system. Lines starting with a # are comments - no need to type them. These instructions will create a subdirectory kombilo inside the current directory.

There are three main steps to the installation: installing Python and the Python packages, downloading the Kombilo files and extracting them, and compiling the extension for the fast pattern search. See below for more details on the different steps.

# Install the packages that Kombilo depends on (and wget for the next step):
sudo apt-get install python-tk python-imaging python-pil.imagetk python-pmw
sudo apt-get install python-configobj g++  libsqlite3-dev wget
sudo apt-get install python-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-system-dev

# cd to the folder where you want to install kombilo
# download the Kombilo archive
wget https://github.com/ugoertz/kombilo/releases/download/v0.7.5/kombilo-0.7.5.tar.gz

# unpack the archive
tar xfz kombilo-0.7.5.tar.gz

# compile the C++ extension
cd kombilo-0.7.5/lk
python setup.py build_ext
cp libkombilo.py build/lib.linux-*/_libkombilo.so ../src/

# start the program
cd ../src/
./kombilo.py

Now continue with the Getting started section of the tutorial. After installing, you start the program by executing the kombilo.py script in the kombilo/src directory.

Basic dependencies

The best Python version to run Kombilo on is Python 2.7. You might be able to get it to work with 2.6, but this will need some more work (at least you need to install pyttk separately). It is currently not compatible with Python 3.

Unless you are a Python specialist, the easiest way to install the packages required for Kombilo is to install the following packages using the package manager of your choice (synaptic, aptitude, apt-get etc.):

python
python-tk
python-imaging
python-imaging-tk
python-pmw
python-configobj

If you are a Python specialist and want to retain finer control (and place Kombilo in a virtualenv environment, say), it is enough to install the python and python-tk packages, and then to use pip to install the Python packages specified in the requirements.txt file.

Downloading Kombilo

tar.gz files

Download the kombilo-0.7.5.tar.gz archive from the Kombilo downloads site.

Unpack the archive somewhere by

tar xfz kombilo-0.7.5.tar.gz

This will extract all the files into the kombilo-0.7.5 subdirectory.

Git repository

You can also clone the Kombilo git repository. See Development below for some details.

Libkombilo

To compile the extension for the pattern search, make sure that the following packages are installed:

g++
python-dev
libboost-filesystem-dev
libboost-system-dev
libsqlite3-dev

Then, to compile the package, do the following:

cd ~/go/lk
python setup.py build_ext
cp build/lib.*/_libkombilo.so ~/go/kombilo/

Development

If you want to work on Kombilo or Libkombilo yourself, you can clone the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/ugoertz/kombilo.git

Make sure (before ...) that you have git installed, and also install SWIG:

sudo apt-get git swig

Before you can compile the libkombilo extension, you need to run swig:

cd kombilo/lk
swig -c++ -python libkombilo.i
python setup.py build_ext
cp libkombilo.py build/lib.linux-*/_libkombilo.so ../src/

Build the documentation

If you installed Kombilo from a tar.gz archive, then you can skip this step. If you installed directly from its git repository, and want to use the documentation offline (either directly or from the Kombilo Help menu), then you need to build the documentation yourself. If you install it from a tar.gz file, then you can skip this step.

Kombilo documentation

Install Sphinx and other required packages (using pip install -r requirements.text; consider using a virtualenv environment) and in the doc/ directory, run

make html
to build the HTML documentation (to be found in doc/_build/html/), or
make latexpdf

to build a pdf file. (For the latter, you need to have LaTeX installed on your computer).

Libkombilo documentation

Install Doxygen by

sudo apt-get install doxygen

and in the lk/doc/ directory, run

doxygen

Besides a lot of warnings, this will generate HTML and LaTeX files of the documentation in lk/doc/build/.

Windows

Installer

Warning

Currently, for version 0.7.5 there is no Windows installer.

The installer installs the Kombilo package together with all libraries etc. which it depends on. Using it should allow you to ignore the whole Installation section of this documentation.

If you would like to know the details, here is some further information:

Basically, the installer extracts an archive which contains the Python interpreter, further packages that Kombilo depends on, and the Kombilo files themselves to your hard disk. In this way, for one thing you do not have to install all these packages yourself, and furthermore Kombilo will not interfere with different versions of these packages that you might have in use.

Main kombilo directory: The Kombilo files all go into the installation directory that you can specify during installation; typically c:\Program Files\kombilo07 or something similar

Source code: The Kombilo source code is included as a zip archive in the main Kombilo directory.

Microsoft DLLs: Python, and hence the Kombilo installer, relies on a couple of DLLs (shared libraries) that are part of Microsoft’s Visual C++ compiler package. The installer includes a self-extracting archive which may be freely distributed; if you do not yet have them, the DLLs will be installed on your system, in an appropriate folder.

Configuration/log files: The individual configuration file kombilo.cfg, and (if necessary) the error log file kombilo.err will be written to a directory inside the APPDATA directory (something like c:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\kombilo\07\).

Uninstall: The installer creates an uninstall menu entry in the Kombilo menu inside your start menu (unless you disable the start menu entry altogether). The uninstaller will remove all files that Kombilo created inside the main kombilo directory, as well as the start menu entry and possibly the desktop icon. It cannot (and should not) remove the DLLs. Neither will it remove the configuration files (see above). This allows you to uninstall kombilo, install a new version, and continue to use your old configuration. Instead of using the menu entry, you can also directly invoke the exe file (its file name starts with unins) directly.

Installation from scratch

If you want to build Kombilo from source yourself, here are some notes. The libkombilo extension has to be compiled with a C++ compiler. You could (probably, and probably easier) use Microsoft Visual C++, but I used the open source MinGW compiler. To use MinGW, some preparations have to be made:

In \Python27\Lib\distutils\, create a file distutils.cfg with the following content:

[build]
compiler = mingw32

Furthermore, there is a problem with the Python distutils core: it passes the -mno-cygwin option to MinGW, but this option is not recognized. One way around this is to remove the -mno-cygwin from lines 322, 323, 324, 325 and 326 of \Python27\Lib\distutils\cygwinccompiler.

Install sqlite3 (and create a libsqlite3.a file for MinGW) and the Boost library (only the header files are needed for libkombilo; there is no need to compile the boost library).

After that, you should be able to run python setup.py build_ext in the lk subdirectory inside your Kombilo directory.

After installing Python and the packages (configobj, PIL, Pmw) that Kombilo depends on, you should now be able to run python kombilo.py.

To create a stand-alone exe file, you can use py2exe. To distribute the whole thing as a one-file-installer, I use InnoSetup. See also the deploy_win method in the fabric file fabfile.py in the main Kombilo directory.

Mac OS X

Kombilo runs on Macs, and since Mac OS X is a Unix variant, most of the notes in the Linux section apply to Mac OS X, as well. However, under some circumstances there appear to be some problems, depending on the versions of the packages that Kombilo depends on. Simon Cozens reported that on a Mac (with Mac OS X 10.6) with Homebrew he could run Kombilo after

sudo easy_install configobj setuptools pyttk pip
brew install PIL boost
sudo pip install pil

then installing Pmw from source and building the libkombilo extension via python setup.py build_ext as described in the Linux section.

On the other hand, sometimes the Python Imaging Library PIL seems to cause problems (installing it via Homebrew seems to be the best way). In fact, it is used only for the nicer stone pictures, so it is not too bad to not use it, and I made this the default for Macs. Change the corresponding option if you do want to use it. (Thanks to R. Berenguel for his help with figuring this out.)

If you have Python 2.6, you need to install the pyttk package to run Kombilo. In Python 2.7, which is the preferred Python version for Kombilo, this package is already included in Python.

See also the Only one mouse button option.

Setting up the SGF databases

Before you can start working with Kombilo, you need to add your SGF files. For Kombilo, a database is just a directory with SGF files in it. Select Edit DB list in the Database menu. A new window will open.

_images/editdblist.jpg

Add databases

In the lower section Processing options you can select which kind of files you want to add, whether to recursively add all subdirectories, whether to accept duplicates, and whether to store variations in the database for pattern search. You can also select whether all games (or none) of the database should be considered as pro games, or whether this should be decided by the rank specified in the files.

If you prefer, you can specifiy a folder where the Kombilo files should be stored. If you do not name a folder here, the files will be stored in the folder containing your SGF files.

Finally, you can choose which algorithms you want to use with your databases. (You can also disable the hashing algorithms for each pattern search, but you can only use then if you selected the corresponding option before processing the games.)

The hashing algorithms speed up searches for full board and corner positions respectively, on the other hand the procesing takes slightly longer, more disk space is consumed, and Kombilo uses more memory when running.

Messages during processing

In the lower text area, Kombilo will output messages about the processed games.

  • Duplicates: Games which are duplicates to games already in the database are named. Being a duplicate is tested with the method chosen in the options. In every case, the Dyer signature (position of moves 20, 31, 40, 51, 60, 71) is compared. With strict duplicate checking, in addition the final position is compared. See Find duplicates.
  • SGF Error: If there was an SGF error, Kombilo issues a warning. It tries to do its best to recover, and will insert as much of the game as it understands into the database anyway.
  • Unacceptable board size: Currently, Kombilo processes only 19x19 games.
  • not inserted: For games which are not inserted into the database, this message is appended to the error message. Otherwise, the game is inserted.
File sizes
No Hashing: roughly 170 MB for about 70,000 games (GoGoD winter 2011)
Hashing for full board positions: roughly 270 MB
Hashing for full board and corner positions: roughly 365 MB

After adjusting the options, if necessary, select Add DB in order to add some SGF files.

The optimal size (i.e. number of SGF files) of the databases depends mostly on the amount of memory in your computer. I recommend a size of at least 1,000 - 2,000 SGF files per database; that should be fine on almost every system. If you have a lot of memory, you can experiment with larger databases to increase performance. For databases with ten thousands of games, the “finalizing” will take quite some time (a few minutes for the 70,000 GoGoD games on my laptop), so please be patient.

Kombilo will create several database files: kombilo.db, kombilo.da, and if you use the hashing algorithms, also kombilo.db1 and kombilo.db2.

Toggle normal/disabled

If you want to temporarily exclude a database from some searches, select it and use this button to set its status to ‘disabled’. It will then be marked as ‘DISABLED’ in the database list. Its games will not show up anymore in the game list, and will not be found by any search. Nevertheless, Kombilo’s database files written during the processing are still available, and if you toggle the status back to ‘normal’, you can use that database again without processing it again.

Remove a database

If you want to remove a database from Kombilo’s list completely, select it and press this button. The database files Kombilo has written will then be deleted. Of yourse, the SGF files themselves will not be deleted (Kombilo will actually never change them.) If you want to add this database again later, it will have to be processed again.

Reprocess a database

If you made any changes to the SGF files in one of the database directories (or added/deleted SGF files in there), you should reprocess the database, so that the pattern search really uses the information corresponding to the current version of the SGF files.

Since version 0.7.1, reprocessing keeps all the tags on your database. This is usually the desired behavior. If you prefer to have all tags deleted, instead of reprocessing, remove the databases and then add them again.

Save messages

If there are errors in the SGF files, or if Kombilo finds duplicates, a message is issued. The ‘save messages’ button allows you to save these messages into a file, such that you can look at them later again in order to correct the errors. (After correcting any errors, you should reprocess the corresponding databases.)

Further notes

With Ctrl-click and Shift-click you can select several databases in the list simultaneously. The “Toggle normal/disabled”, “Remove” and “Reprocess” buttons will then apply to all the selected databases.

Currently it is not possible to add single games to a database, or to delete single games.

Searching

There are two main ways to search in your database: by patterns occurring in the games (Pattern search), and by properties written out in the SGF file (such as the players, the result, the date, the event where the game was played etc.). We call the latter type of search a Game info search.

Furthermore, you can search for tags - either games that were automatically tagged by Kombilo (e.g. handicap games), or for games that you tagged yourself - (Tag search), and for the Dyer signature of a game (Signature search). This is typically used less often, but may be useful to quickly find a game whose Kifu you have in printed form.

Export search results

If you want to save some information on a pattern search, you can use the ‘Export search results’ function in the Database menu. This will open a new window with a very simple text editor. It will contain the search pattern, the search pattern with the continuations, some statistical information on the search, and the number of hits in each database.

You can edit the information and in the end save the text to a file. I would be interested in hearing your opinion if other or additional information should be given, or if the information should be presented in another format.

Before the text editor opens, you will be asked if you want “ASCII” or “Wiki” style output. Usually you will choose ‘ASCII’, which produces plain text. If you want to use the output for Sensei’s Library, choose ‘Wiki’ instead. You can also choose if all continuations, or if only ten of them should be displayed.

The text editor has a button which lets you include the complete current game list (names of players, etc.).

The game list

The game list shows the current list of games. Depending on your configuration, it shows the white player, the black player, the result, the date. In the options menu, you can choose to include (or exclude) the file name as the first item, and the date as the last item.

After a pattern search, the game list shows a list of hits for each game: the move number when the pattern occurred; the continuation (if any); a minus sign if the pattern occurred with black/white exchanged.

Entries with different color (or background color) reflect tags set on games. This behavior can be configured in kombilo.cfg.

Statistics

The statistics tab shows information about the continuations in the most recent pattern search. For each of the 12 most common continuation, a bar indicates the frequency. The black/white parts of the bar indicate the number of times that black/white played in the pattern region immediately after the pattern was completed. The dark gray/light gray parts indicate the number of times that black/white played in the pattern region after a tenuki.

Date profile

The bar diagram shows the distribution of games in the current list in comparison to all games in the database, by date. The height of the bars indicate the proportion of games in current list versus games in complete database. The height of the bars does not contain absolute information, i.e. even if there are only very few games in the current list, the highest bar will have full height. Absolute information is printed above the bars (number of games in current list in this time period/number of games in complete database in this time period).

Computing the date profile is pretty slow (much slower than a pattern search), so you should keep this tab open only as long as you are really interested in the results.

Tags

You can tag games in order to find them more easily and to carry through more complicated searches. The Tags tab lists all existing tags. The following ones are built into Kombilo and are set (semi-)automatically:

  • Handicap game; set automatically for all handicap games.
  • Professional (a game where at least one professional player plays). You can choose during processing whether and in which way Kombilo should set this tag.
  • Reference to commentary available; set automatically for all games for which a reference to a game comment in the literature is available. You can configure which books/journals should be considered here by editing the file kombilo.cfg accordingly.
  • Seen: set automatically for all games which you opened in the SGF viewer.

If you select a game in the game list, the tags which it carries are highlighted in the tag list. On the other hand, you can specify how tagged games should be marked in the game list (text color/background color).

Creating new tags/deleting tags

To create a new tag, add its abbreviation (which must not yet be taken) followed by a space and the description of the tag, like this:

N My new tag

and click the button showing a plus sign.

To delete a tag from the tag list (and hence to remove it from all games), enter its abbreviation and click the button showing a minus sign.

Setting/removing tags on games

_images/tag_buttons.jpg

To specify the tags of a single game, select the game in the game list. The tags which it currently carries are highlighted. You can now select/deselect tags in the tag list by clicking them (use Control-click to select multiple entries). To set the chosen combination of tags on the selected games, click the second button from the left in the tags toolbar.

To add a tag to all games currently in game list, enter its abbreviation into the text entry field, and click the third button from the left. To remove a tag from all games currently in the game list, enter its abbreviation into the text entry field and click the fourth button from the left (depicting a broom).

For instance, you could create a tag A Large Avalanche Joseki, do a pattern search for the large avalanche joseki, and tag all games in the resulting game list with the tag A. The you can easily search for all these games, also in combination with other tags, and you can search for all games where the large avalanche does not occur, by searching for not A - and again, this can be combined with searching for other tags.

Importing/exporting tabs

You can export the tags in your current database, and import them later to a (different) database. (Use the corresponding menu items in the Database menu.) The games are identified by the Dyer signature and some additional hash code, so the imported tags will be set precisely on the games with the same moves as the games that carried the tags when exporting.

In version 0.7, you can/should use this to transfer your tags when updating your database by reprocess. Since version 0.7.1, reprocess does this for you automatically.

GoTo field

Use this field (in the game info search tab) to jump to a game in the game list quickly by entering a few letters of the current sort criterion (see the options/game list menu). E.g., if you sort the games by date, entering 1990 will bring you to the games from 1999; if you sort the games by white player, entering Cho will bring you to the games with white player Cho.

Log

In this tab, Kombilo prints out some information about its actions (timing of searches etc.).

Find duplicates

Use Find duplicates in the Database menu to produce a list of duplicates in the database (or rather, in all the databases that are currently active). The list will be presented in a new window and can be saved as a text file. The duplicate check will be strict (i.e., the Dyer signature and the final position will be compared) or non-strict (only the Dyer signatures will be compared) depending on the setting of the corresponding processing option. This option can be changed in the Edit DB list window or in the Options-Advanced menu.

The SGF editor

Most of the SGF editor handling should be self-explanatory, so this section is rather brief.

Warning

By default, Kombilo does not ask for a confirmation before discarding unsaved changes, or before deleting a game. You can change this in the options menu, or in the kombilo.cfg configuration file.

Guess mode

Activating the guess next move button (depicting a question mark) in the SGF edit toolbar in the data window starts Kombilo’s guess mode. That means that clicks on the board will be interpreted as guesses - if it coincides with the next move in the current SGF file, that move is played; otherwise no stone is placed on the board. For obvious reasons, the show next move option will be disabled as long as the guess mode is active..

When you switch to the ‘guess next move’ mode, a small frame appears next to the game tree, which gives you some feedback on your guesses. If your guess is right, it displays a green square (and the move is played on the board).

If the guess is wrong, it displays a red rectangle; the rectangle is roughly centered at the position of the next move, and the closer your guess was, the smaller is that rectangle. Furthermore the number of correct guesses and the number of all guesses, as well as the success percentage are given.

If you just can’t find the next move, you can always use the ‘Next move’ button above the board to move forward in the game.

Export current position/SGF

Similarly to the Export search results function, you can “Export current position” (in the database menu): this will open a text editor with the current position. Again, you can choose “ASCII” or “Wiki” type. In addition, Kombilo can put the next moves (up to 9 moves) on the board, marked by the numbers 1 to 9.

Finally, you can also export the SGF source of the current game (see the File menu), in a text editor.

Miscellaneous remarks

With the rotate/flip SGF file menu items (in the Edit menu), you can rotate and flip the game; th SGF file is changed so as to describe the game with the new orientation. This is useful if you want to change a game record to obey the usual convention that the first move is in the upper right corner.

With the split collection button (depicting scissors) right to the list of files, you can split one SGF file containing several games into a collection of files, one for each game.

With Copy current SGF files to folder in the Database menu you can copy the SGF files corresponding to the games currently in the game list to some folder (e.g. in order to use them with a different program).

@@monospace in SGF comments. If you put the string @@monospace as the first line of a comment of an SGF node, Kombilo will display the comment in a fixed width font. This is useful whenever you want to output tabular data in a node (see the sgftree script).

In the Game info edit window, in the Other SGF tags entry field you must enter correct SGF code, i.e. special signs such as ] and \ must be escaped by a preceding \.

Key and mouse bindings

Global key bindings

  • Control-r reset game list
  • Control-s select statistics tab
  • Control-o select options tab
  • Control-g select game info search tab
  • Control-d select date profile tab
  • Control-t select tags tab
  • Control-p start pattern search
  • Control-b go back to previous search
  • Control-e print information about previous search pattern to log tab

If the search-history-as-tab option is 1, then there is also

  • Control-h select search history tab

Board key bindings

  • Left/right: back/forward 1 move
  • Up/down: back/forward 10 moves
  • Home/end: to start/end of game
  • PgUp/PgDown: navigate variations
  • Control-i: open game info

Game list key bindings

  • Up/down/PgUp/PgDown: move in game list
  • Home/End: scroll to left/right
  • Return: open selected game in viewer
  • Control-a: print Dyer signature of selected game to log tab

Mouse bindings

  • Use Left-click to put stones on the board.
  • With Right-click and drag, you select the search-relevant region.
  • Use Shift + Left-click you can put (change/remove) Wildcards on the board.
  • With Shift + Right-clicking on a stone, you can go to the point in the SGF file, where this stone was played.
  • The mouse wheel lets you scroll the game list, or scroll through the current game, depending on where the mouse pointer is located.
  • The next button triggers a pattern search, the back button goes back to the previous search. (This does not work on Windows.)

Configuring Kombilo

The most common options can be changed in the Options menu. Furthermore, you can configure Kombilo by editing the file kombilo.cfg (when Kombilo is not running). Finally, the appearance can be modified by creating/changing the file kombilo.app accordingly.

Window layout

You can change the width of the three columns of the main window, as well as the height of the entried in the left hand column by dragging the “sashed” between them to the left/right (or up/down, resp.). Move your mouse pointer slowly over the region between the columns; it should change its look when you are over the sash.

See also the maximize window option.

Options in the Options menu

Fuzzy stone placement Place the stones on the main board slightly off the exact point, in a random direction, to make the position look more natural. (Well, some people might think that it is just ugly, so you can switch it off here).

Shaded stone mouse pointer (Don’t) Show the current position of the mouse pointer on the board and the color of the next stone to be played by a shaded stone.

Show next move In case a SGF file has been loaded, show the position of the next move with a circle.

Show last move This marks the most recent move with a small circle. Thanks to Bernd Schmidt who provideda a patch for this. (The SGF file is not changed.)

Show Coordinates Show coordinates around the board.

Ask before discarding unsaved changes If this option is enabled, Kombilo will ask for confirmation before discarding unsaved changes in an SGF file (i.e. before deleting the game from the game list, and before exiting Kombilo).

Jump to match This controls the behaviour of the SGF viewer when you open a game from the game lis tafter a pattern search. If this option is checked, the viewer will jump directly to the position where the pattern you searched for was found in that game.

Smart fixed color If this option is enabled, the ‘fixed color’ option will be automatically enabled when you select the whole board as search-relevant region, and disabled when you select a smaller region. (You can nevertheless change that after selecting the region and before starting the search.) This is useful because if ‘fixed color’ is not used, Kombilo regards a position and the same position with swapped colors as equivalent; in the case of whole board searches that can lead to counter-intuitive results when you look at the continuations (e.g. place a black resp. white stone on the upper left resp. upper right hoshi, do a whole board search without ‘fixed color’, and look at the continuations).

Themes

Kombilo offers you to change its look according to one of a number of themes. Which themes are available depends on your operating system. Just try them out. The effects will be visible immediately.

The ‘Game list’ submenu

Sorting the game list First of all, in the ‘Game list’ submenu of the Options menu, you can choose how to sort the game list: by name of white or black player, date or filename.

You can reverse the whole game list by selecting the Reverse order option. So if you would like to sort the whole list by date, with the most current games at the top, you could disable ‘Sort per database’, choose ‘Sort by date’, and select ‘Reverse order’.

Show date/show filename Depending on where your SGF files come from, it might be interesting to include the filename in the game list (as was done automatically in previous Kombilo versions), or to omit it. Similarly, it might be interesting to include the date (if it cannot be read off from the file name, say, or to omit it). These two options allow you to control this. Changing either of these options will reset the game list.

Advanced

Open game in external SGF viewer By default, by double-clicking on a game in a game list, the game is opened in Kombilo’s main window. (You can open the game in an external viewer, by shift-clicking, though). If this option is active, double-clicking opens the game in an external viewer (v.py or an alternative SGF viewer). In that case, shift-clicking opens the game in the Kombilo main window.

Alternative SGF viewer If you want to use your customary SGF viewer/editor instead of the viewer coming with Kombilo, enter the command to start it and the command line options that tell it to open a certain sgf file here (put an %f where the filename should be). (If your viewer supports it, you can also put an %n where the move number the viewer should jump to directly should be put.)

If your viewer supports jumping directly to a certain move in a game, you can use %n as a placeholder for the move number of the first hit. Similarly, if your viewer supports SGF collection, you can use %g as a placeholder for the number of the concerning game in the given SGF file.

Under Windows, the file name is put in quotes. This is necessary if the path contains spaces. If you don’t want the quotes (or want to set them yourself), you can use %F instead.

Maximize window (Windows only) If this is active, Kombilo will try to maximize its main window on startup. This option will become effective when you start Kombilo the next time (not immediately).

The kombilo.cfg configuration file

All configurable options can be changed by editing the file kombilo.cfg in the kombilo folder. This file is a plain text file which you can edit yourself. You should not edit this file while Kombilo is running. It is created when Kombilo is started for the first time.

Note

Location of the kombilo.cfg file

Depending on your platform, the kombilo.cfg file will be stored in the following place:

Linux/Mac OS: ~/.kombilo/07/, where ~ is your home directory; on Linux, this is typically /home/yourusername/.

Windows: In the folder kombilo\07\ inside the APPDATA folder; typically APPDATA is something like \Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\.

If you want to use several instances of the same Kombilo version at the same time, you can also place the kombilo.cfg file inside the main Kombilo directory. If there is a kombilo.cfg present there, it will be preferred. Note that in this case you need write permissions for this folder.

Lines starting with a # are comments. Most options are explained by comments in this file.

In addition to the options, you can also define how tagged games should be displayed (background/foreground color) in the game list, and which references to commentaries in the literature should be displayed in the game list.

search_history_as_tab (new in 0.7.1) Set this to 1 in order to put the search history frame as a tab in the right hand column. If the option is 0, then the search history will be displayed as the bottom pane of the left hand column. The current default for this option is 0, in version 0.8 the default will become 1.

use_PIL (new in 0.7.1) Set this to 0 in order to disable the use of the Python Imaging Library (PIL). If 1, then PIL will be used. If use_PIL = auto, then PIL will not be used on Mac OS, but will be used on other systems. This is the default setting, because PIL causes problems on Mac OS X. The only consequence is that without PIL, you will not get the “3D” stones, but just black/white circles as stones. (So if you prefer the flat stones, you could just set this option to 0.)

Uppercase labels If you want to use the ‘Export search results’ function to produce output for Sensei’s Library, it is useful to use lowercase labels for the continuations, since only lowercase letters are automatically understood by Sensei’s Library. If you do not want to do that, and find that uppercase labels look better, you can use this option.

Only one mouse button Some Mac OS X users have a mouse with only one button. Using this option, they can mark the search-relevant region with Alt + (left) mouse button instead of the right mouse button. Set it to

onlyOneMouseButton = <M2-Button-1>;<M2-B1-Motion>

Number of previous searches remembered As we have seen, with the ‘back’ button you can jump back to the previous search. This option controls the number of previous searches that are remembered. The default is 30, and if your machine has only a small amount of memory, you probably should not set it much higher, or Kombilo might run out of memory and crash. On the other hand, if you have lots of memory, it might be convenient to set it to a higher number, or even to 0, which means ‘no limit’: all searches are remembered, as long as there is enough memory.

Per-user configuration file

If in the main section, the kombilo.cfg file contains a configdir entry, like

configdir = ~

then this will be taken as a directory, and the kombilo.cfg file will be read from the .kombilo subdirectory of the configdir. In the configdir string, the tilde ~ will be replaced with the user’s home directory (Linux). In this case, settings in the individual config file will overwrite those in the global file.

kombilo.app

You can change some ‘global properties’ like background color, type and size of the font used in the game list and in the text windows etc. by creating a file ‘kombilo.app’ in the main Kombilo directory. This is a plain text file; if you change it, please make sure to save the new version as plain text (ASCII), too.

Here is an example which shows the format of the file:

*font:                  Helvetica 10
*background:            grey88
*foreground:            black
*activeBackground:      grey77
*activeForeground:      black
*selectBackground:      grey77
*selectForeground:      black
*Listbox.background:    white
*Text.background:       white
*Entry.background:      white
*Canvas.background:     grey88
*Label.background:      grey88

Note

Changed in version 0.7.1: Before Version 0.7.1, the kombilo.app file was present by default. Before you create it, check whether you can obtain a look which is to your taste by choosing a *theme* in the options menu.

Miscellaneous

The files containing the board image and the black and white stones are icons/board.jpg, icons/black.gif and icons/white.gif.

Troubleshooting

In case of errors, Kombilo writes some information to the file kombilo.err which is in the same directory as your kombilo.cfg file.

If you encounter problems, feel free to contact me.

Contributing

Kombilo intentionally is an open-source project. It has profited much from the contributions of its users in the past, and all your feedback and contributions are very much appreciated.

Development is concentrated on the Kombilo project page on BitBucket.

Tell me how you like Kombilo

Any kind of feedback is appreciated. Tell me which parts of Kombilo you like, and which ones need improvement. Did you use the Kombilo engine in your own scripts? I would be glad to learn about your results.

Ask questions, report bugs

If you have any problems, feel free to ask! Either by email at ug@geometry.de, or via the issue tracker.

Ideas

I have lots of ideas of new features I would like to implement, and I also would like to learn your ideas and priorities!

Development

If you have time to delve into Kombilo development, check out the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/ugoertz/kombilo.git

Feel free to fork the project and do send me pull requests for improvements or fixes you made.

Documentation

I try to maintain a reasonably complete documentation, but there surely are gaps and probably some inaccuracies. Please notify me, if you think that something is not explained well.

Windows/Mac OS X

I would love to add better support for Windows and/or Mac OS X users, however I do not have access to computers running either of these operating systems, right now. If you make progress on this, please tell me. I am also willing to discuss problems based on my experience with the previous Kombilo version for which I made a Windows installer.

Miscellaneous notes

References to commentaries

Kombilo has built in a list of references to game commentaries in the english go literature. The games are referenced by the Dyer signature (a signature assigned to the game which encodes the positions of move 20, 40, 60, 31, 51, 71, and which in practice characterizes a game uniquely); in particular Kombilo does not contain the game records. If Kombilo recognizes a game for which it has a reference, the corresponding line in the game list is highlighted by a light green background (by default - you can change this by editing the kombilo.cfg file), and a line which gives the actual reference is appended to the game info which is shown when that line in the game list is selected. (This is printed in blue, to show that it is not part of the game info proper, but was added by Kombilo.)

_images/references.jpg

Currently, the list contains around 2000 references; in particular all issues of Go World, and most English books with game commentaries that I know of.

The references are stored in the file references in the data folder inside the main Kombilo directory. This is just a text file which you could edit yourself. The format should be self-explanatory. You can also download the current version of this file from the Kombilo source code repository and save it as the references file.

If you want only references to sources which you own to be shown, you can define exclude or include rules in the file kombilo.cfg.

Of course, additions to the list of references are very welcome. I think it would make sense to add references to other journals, like the American Go Journal, the British Go Journal, the Deutsche Go-Zeitung, the Revue Francaise de Go, etc.

Command line arguments

Kombilo.py

You can give file names of SGF files as command line arguments, and Kombilo will open these files upon startup. The file names should be given with the complete path. If blanks occur in the path or in the file name, it has to be put inside quotation marks.

v.py

The v.py SGF viewer accepts one SGF file name as the first argument, and optionally a move number as the second argument. The file will be opened at the specified move number.

Encodings

Kombilo can use SGF files with non-ASCII characters such as umlauts (äöü), accents (éèê), asian language characters, etc, but currently it can only handle UTF-8-encoded files. Of course, in addition the appropriate fonts to display these characters must be installed on your computer.

Requirements on SGF files

There are a few requirements on the SGF files that are used in the databases. They will be satisfied by ordinary game records, but might not be satisfied by “strange” SGF files.

First of all, the filename of an SGF file always has to end in ‘.sgf’.

In addition, at the very beginning an initial position can be set up. This is what happens in handicap games, for example. So handicap stones are treated correctly. It is also possible to set up an initial position consisting of black and white stones, like a go problem. On the other hand, “during the game”, i.e. after the first black or white move has been played, no stones may be added or removed except for the ordinary alternating black/white moves (and except for captures, of course). In particular, all stones in the initial position have to be set up in the same node of the SGF file. Unfortunately, in a few handicap games of the Go Teaching Ladder, this is not the case; you will have to edit these files manually if you want to use them with Kombilo.

Empty nodes are skipped. When the usual ‘black play’ - ‘white play’ - ‘black play’ ... order is broken, Kombilo will stop processing the game in question at that point. This is another problem with games of the Go Teaching Ladder: in some of them, after a variation forked off a black/white move is not shown with the usual B/W tag, but with a AB/AW tag (which should be used to set up stones like handicap stones). Kombilo will process these games only until the first variation.

SGF collections: Kombilo’s SGF editor can handle SGF files with several games in them, and so can the search engine. Nevertheless it is not a good idea to use games in that form, for performance reasons. It is better to split the collections, and then feed them into Kombilo. The problem with collections is that whenever the SGF file has to be read (for game info searches or to display the game info), the whole collection has to be read from disk, and has to be parsed.

The viewer does accept most SGF features, I think. In particular it handles variations (the navigation has to be done by clicking on the concerning points on the board), and adding/removal of stones during the game. It displays labels, but it does not properly display text labels with more than one letter/digit.

It ignores some of the new SGF tags like “good for black”, “bad for white”, ... .

Kombilo ignores everything before the first ‘(;’. In particular, it will accept files with am email header and an SGF file after that. Be aware, though, that the header will be lost when you change the game info of that game: whenever Kombilo writes an SGF file, it will only write the game (resp. the game collection) itself.

Where to find game records

Here are some sources of game records: