Chinese Go Diagrams

Sometimes, on usenet or on the web, you may find stuff like this:

©³©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©·
©Ä©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à¡ð©à©Ì
©Ä©à©à©à©à©à©à©à¡ñ©à©à¡ñ©à¡ð¡ð¡ð¡ñ¡ñ©Ì
©Ä©à©à©ï©à©à©à©à©à©ï©à©à¡ñ¡ñ¡ð¡ñ©à©à©Ì
©Ä©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à¡ñ©à¡ñ©à©Ì
©Ä©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©Ì
©Ä©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©à©Ì

which looks like garbage.

In fact, this is a representation of a Go position, using the fact that some oriental fonts include Go stones and empty intersections. This page aims to show you how to make sense of this.

When people present Go diagrams in this way, they expect that you will have some font software for displaying oriental characters. This will cause it to be displayed as a Go board. Examples of such software, for Windows, are:

Either you can obtain some such software (a trial version of NJStar can be downloaded free), or you can interpret the characters yourself. Below is the information you need to do this.

Unfortunately, there are several standards for representing Chinese characters in computers. The most widely used (in my experience) are BIG5, which tends to be used in countries which use "traditional" Chinese characters, such as Hong Kong; and GB, which tends to be used in mainland China, where "simplified" Chinese characters are used. There are also two standards for japanese characters.

Here is the same diagram (of a three-by-seven Go board), presented using:

Graphics


 
BIG5 (Chinese) 
¢z¢s¢s¢s¢s¢s¢{
¢u¡´¢q¢q¡³¢q¢t
¢|¢r¢r¢r¢r¢r¢}
 
GB, GBCJK, GBK (Chinese) 
©³©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©Ó©·
©Ä¡ñ©à©ï¡ð©à©Ì
©»©Û©Û©Û©Û©Û©¿
¢Ù¢Ú¢Û¢Ü¢Ý¢Þ¢ß¢à¢á¢â
£±£²£³£´£µ£¶£·£¸£¹£°
¡ð¡ñ¡ó¡ô¡õ¡ö¡÷¡ø
HZ (Chinese) 
~{)3)S)S)S)S)S)7~}
~{)D!q)`)o!p)`)L~}
~{);)[)[)[)[)[)?~}
 
BIG5CJK (Chinese) 
¢z¢s¢s¢s¢s¢s¢{
¢u¡´¢q¢q¡³¢q¢t
¢|¢r¢r¢r¢r¢r¢}
 
TBCJK (Chinese) 
…|…ž…ž…ž…ž…ž…‚
…Ž‚J…¯…¯‚I…¯…–
…†…§…§…§…§…§…Š
 
EUC-JIS (Japanese) 
¨®¨¸¨¸¨¸¨¸¨¸¨¯
¨·¡ü¨«¨¶¡û¨«¨¹
¨±¨º¨º¨º¨º¨º¨°
 
Shift-JIS (Japanese) 
„¬„¶„¶„¶„¶„¶„­
„µœ„©„´›„©„·
„¯„¸„¸„¸„¸„¸„®
 
Generic Japanese
using start- and end-sequences		 
$B(#((((((((((($(B
$B('(+!|!&!{(+()(B
$B(&(*(*(*(*(*(%(B
Thanks to Shigeru Oguma for this.
KSC 5601 (Korean) 
¦®¦¸¦¸¦¸¦¸¦¸¦¯
¦·¡Ü¦«¦¶¡Û¦«¦¹
¦±¦º¦º¦º¦º¦º¦°
 
Unicode 
┌┬┬┬┬┬┐
├●┼╋○◯┤
└┴┴┴┴┴┘
Those two white stones may appear different.

By examining these diagrams, you can see that the "garbage" at the top of this page is using the GB system, that a ©³ is a top left corner, a ¡ñ is a black stone, etc.

Another way of displaying Go positions efficiently on the web uses small graphics.

Last updated Mon May 08 2017.
If you have any comments, please email the webmaster on web-master AT britgo DOT org.

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