GoDraw Development

GODRAW LATEST VERSION

GoDraw V 6.4.3 is available for general use, as from its release date of 30/10/18.

Player List [1] is the latest list of known players. Please download the player list separately if you are downloading GoDraw V 6.4.3 more than a few days after the release date. It is best to save the file without opening it in the browser - as some might change the formatting.

The current GoPlayers.gdi file is updated regularly, and replaces the one issued with the program. Its location is the same as the installed location of GoDraw. This will be C:\GoDrawSys (the default in Windows XP), or C:\Users\Public\GodrawSys (default in Windows10).

Please ensure that the downloaded file has the correct name and extension (GoPlayers.gdi), as some browsers might append (.html). When you re-run GoDraw, newly-entered players will have names, grades and clubs as up-to-date as at the most recent tournament.

GODRAW IN WINDOWS

If this is your first use of GoDraw, or you have been having problems installing or running in Windows 10, then please have a look at the Install page.

Install [2] The installation procedure for all Windows.
Download GoDrawV6.4.3 [3] for Windows XP.
Download GoDrawV6.4.3-U [4] for Windows 10.

Some users have experienced issues regarding installation in Windows 10. There has also been some problem loading a registration text file into GoDraw. These issues along with solutions are documented in the Installation page.

GODRAW IN WINE

Linux users are able to run GoDraw in Wine. The GoDraw-Wine software provides utilities making it easy to run GoDraw in a Linux system, once you have installed Wine. It is available as a tar file, and comes with the GoDraw-Wine manual.

GoDraw-Wine [5] is the software collection.
GoDraw-Wine manual [6] describes how to install and use GoDraw-Wine.

In a nutshell, wine is a program run from the command line in a Linux system. The command: wine GoDraw.exe produces the GoDraw window familiar to Windows users.

I am grateful to John Collins for pioneering running GoDraw in Wine on an Ubuntu distribution. I have tested the scripts included in GoDraw-Wine on the Debian distribution and am running GoDraw in Wine regularly.

DOCUMENTATION

Online Manual [7] Includes a quick tour of Godraw.
Download Club Names [8] File of club codes and names.

Please see the Introduction and Quick Tour sections of the Online Manual to get a fast overview of the system. The manual is included in the download file. There is also extensive on screen help in GoDraw when running in XP.

If you have any issues concerning GoDraw, please contact draw-program at britgo dot org

CHANGING THE BAR DURING REGISTRATION: During registration, the bar setting just reports how many players there are above the level you choose. It does not adjust initial McMahon scores. Spurious operator warnings were displayed at each change. These have been removed and displayed on the status bar instead.

DISPLAY OF FRACTIONAL MMS IN TOURNAMENT RESULTS: Fixed rounding error in the display of a player with an mms of -1/2.

ROOMS: In menu Settings->Rules you can allocate rooms containing different numbers of boards. If you do not allocate enough boards, GoDraw now creates a new room for the extra boards, instead of adding them to the last room.

GROUPS

BUGFIXES IMPLEMENTED in version 6.4.2 released on 11/06/18: When creating a special group e.g. players prefer to play or players must not play - others in the group, the group code starts with a single letter ID (A-Z) followed by a single selector character ( + - * ~ ), where the selector means:
(+) prefer to play
(-) prefer not to play
(*) must play
(~) must not play

It is common to use the last selector to prevent family members from playing each other. All the possible codes are shown in the dropdown list.

You can also create one of 10 top groups with a code like (d:) where d is one of the digits (0 - 9). GoDraw was automatically completing a typed 1 to 1: and if you then press Enter the register edit is happily accepted, but you have created a supergroup and not a special group. The auto complete has been switched off and you get a message reminding you what your options are. You cannot continue until you close the message, so you cannot inadvertently create a top group when you meant to create a special group.

You can also use the menu Tools->Groups to create any group of your choice. Here you can easily select players and the super/special group codes cannot be confused.

EDIT CLUB OR COUNTRY

A trailing space on a name generated a syntax error message. Spaces are now trimmed.

INSTALLATION: A separate self-extracting executable is provided for Windows 10 users who do not want to use the Administrator account. It installs all files into the folder C:\Users\Public\GoDrawSys by default.
IMPORT REGISTER: If any errors are detected in the register text file, the error message displays the whole line containing the error number. Any non-ANSI or illegal control characters in the line are made visible.

SAME-CLUB GAMES: GoDraw aims to avoid same-club games below the bar. We now give priority for choosing an alien opponent to those with the largest number of same-club games.
NO CLUB: Players entering with club 'No Club' are no longer kept apart.
EDITING THE DRAW: You now get a warning message that any printouts refer to the previous round, not the currently edited one. Also mis-clicks while editing no longer produce an operator error, but the information is quietly displayed in the status bar of the GoDraw window.

SEEDING A NEW TOURNAMENT: Creating a new tournament by seeding from a previous one and then deleting unwanted players: this resulted in spurious blank lines at the top of the register.
CLOSING REGISTER: Running a non-McMahon tournament produced a spurious message regarding setting the bar.
SWISS HANDICAP: Assigning a large handicap manually produced a display of the form hcap++komi.

BAR SETTING: The setting of the bar has been improved, by limiting the bar-depth to less than 3 grades difference. The bar-depth is the difference between the maximum entry grade and the bar-grade. This restriction avoids the frequent occurrence where high dan players are drawn in even games against kyu players. It has been shown that if players are correctly graded, the latter have have extremely low probability of winning the tournament.

If you change the bar before close of registration, you now get a message warning that the bar will be recalculated when you do close the register. Furthermore at that point you will get a message stating where the bar has been set and explaining that you can change the bar if this is needed.
SMALL TOURNAMENTS: When running small McMahon tournaments, you may experience the situation where the draw is incomplete. The pairing method works well when the number of players is at least 3 x number of rounds. If there is an incomplete draw, you now get a message with hints as to how to manage the situation manually.

REVERSE REGISTER SORT: Some actions would leave the register sorted in an order different to the displayed order. So clicking a player produced the wrong details.
KOMI STONES: If the handicap exceeds 9 stones in an edited draw, komi stones are awarded to black. The handicap and komi strings were merged without an intervening "+" leading to excessive handicap and a complaint when the draw edit was saved.
ACCESS VIOLATION: There were instances where some action would result in an access violation message, but GoDraw could continue without harm. This was experienced when importing a register from a file with blank lines containing invisible characters. It was also seen when ending a manual draw resulted in not all players paired.

You can view past improvements and bug fixes [9] in a separate page.