# SGF Format

The established format to store go games is the Smart Go Format (SGF). This format is described and maintained by a group of go programmers. You can view the description on the pages of Arno Hollosi. The format is flexible enough to store other games too, but we are mainly insterested in Go here. The format is a bit difficult to read by humans, which is one of the reasons, Jago implements an XML format as an alternative.

You can tell SGF files by their file ending ".sgf". XML files have the extension ".xml".

There are numerous sites in the Net, which keep games in SGF. As a starting point use one of the following

- Jan Steen's go page
- The go web links at NNGS

There is an alternative format supported by Japanese organization, the GoScribe format. The files end with ".go". There are converters available between both formats. There is even a less important format introduced by the Liberty program for the Atari ST. Jan Steen provides an on-line converter. Look at his page for details.

In most browsers, it is very easy to setup the browser such that go files are associated with a viewer. Using Internet Explorer, when you click on a link to a go game, you will get a message to choose the program, which should be used to display the game. You can then choose the batch files that comes with Jago and starts Jago locally. A file, which sould work

    c:
    cd \jago
    jrew -cp jago.jar LocalGo %1

Store these lines into a file named `localgo.bat`.