Annotations

You can annotate every node in the game tree in several ways so that when you pass a saved game to someone else they can view the game and get useful information about the moves that were played and the positions that resulted from those moves.

The user interface makes the controls for viewing and editing annotations available to you in the Annotation view. The Annotation view displays the annotation data for the game tree node that is currently selected.

Because there is not enough screen space available to display all annotations at the same time, the Annotation view is split into two pages. To change from one page to the next you use a swipe-left or swipe-right gesture.

In the lower part of the view (highlighted in red in the page 1 illustration below) is an indicator which page of the Annotation view you are currently viewing. Instead of swiping you can tap on the page indicator to go the next or previous page.

On page 1 of the Annotation view there are four buttons representing four of the six types of annotations that you can make. Tapping a button will call up a screen with values that match the button’s annotation type. When you select one of the values you annotate the game tree node with the selected value.

When you tap the button labeled “Move” and select the value “Bad move”, the game tree node is annotated to the effect that the move in that node, made by whichever player, is a bad move for that player.

The icon used for each button represents the value currently selected for the button’s annotation type. In the illustration above all buttons use the icon , which indicates “No value”. This is the default if you haven’t annotated a node yet. Here is an example illustration showing some icons after a value was selected for all four annotation types on page 1.

If you don’t remember which value an icon represents you can tap the button and check in the screen that pops up what the icon means.

On page 2 of the Annotation view you find the short and long descriptions of the game tree node. Highlighted in red are buttons that you use to edit the description texts.

Tapping the Edit button will call up the “Edit node description” screen where you can edit both description types at the same time.

Tapping the Delete button will discard both descriptions - this is a shortcut to calling up the “Edit node description” screen and manually deleting the description texts.

The illustration above shows how the page looks like when no descriptions are present. Here is an example illustration showing how the page looks like when both descriptions are present.

Also note that now that descriptions are present the Delete button is enabled.

In the list of nodes of the currently selected game variation, a node content view also displays a bit of annotation data:

• The view shows the symbol if the node contains any annotation data.
• The view shows the symbol if the node is designated as a hotspot. The symbol is either black (regular hotspot) or red (intense hot spot).

You can write a short and/or a long description text to describe a game tree node. You can use these texts in any way you like, for instance to describe in detail what motivated the move that was played to create the board position, or why the move was particularly good or bad. Description texts might also, for instance, refer to markup that is visible in that board position. To learn more, read the Markup section of this manual.

The text you write for the long description has no limits - it can even contain newlines. The short description text on the other hand may not contain any newlines - if you attempt to enter a newline the app will convert it to a space character. By definition the short description text should be succinct so that it can be displayed by a program even if there is not much screen space available.

You can assign a valuation to a game tree node, such as “good for black”, “very good for white”, “even”, etc. The position valuation is not tied to a particular move but to the board position as a whole.

You can choose from the following positon valuations:

You can assign a valuation to the move that was being played to create a board position, such as “good move”, “very bad move”, “doubtful move”, etc.

You cannot assign a move valuation if the current game tree node does not contain a move. For instance, you cannot assign a move valuation when you are viewing the node at the start of the game.

You can choose from the following move valuations:

You can designate a game tree node to be a “hotspot” to indicate that something particularly interesting happened in that node. For instance the node contains a game-deciding move. The “hotspot” is not related to any specific place on the board, but marks the whole board position instead.

You can choose from the following hotspot designations:

You can assign a score estimate to a board position. This consists of the information which side is winning (black or white), and by how much (a numeric value). The score estimate may also indicate a tie.

Because score estimates contain numeric data they cannot be shown as symbols, instead they are shown in text form that follows a well-known convention.

These are the possible score estimate values:

For the technically inclined, here is how each annotation value maps to properties defined by the SGF standard.