Module talk:Shogi diagram
The change on 23 August replaced letters with numerals for row labels. I thought the western standard for shogi notation was to use letters to replace these Japanese numerals. --IanOsgood (talk) 23:15, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
- There doesnt seem to be a standard. Obviously, there's no official standard since there's no western organization prescribing such things. But, de facto, seems like different folks use different notations.
- Reasons for using numbers were (1) similarity to Japanese, (2) easier to process/translate from Japanese notation [this was my main bias in favor of two numbers], (3) more recent usage in published material, (4) less confusing for chess players. (See: Talk:Shogi/Archive_3#shogi_notation_on_wikipedia) – ishwar (speak) 01:17, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
- In my research, the vast majority of international shogi notation and diagrams online and in non-Japanese literature use Hodges notation (P-7f), therefore non-Japanese Wikipedia sites should follow suit. Evidence:
- 1. Google results. Of the top fifty international sites returned from searching "shogi", about 10% mention shogi notation or board coordinates. Of those, all but one (81dojo) use Hodges notation:
- 3. https://genedavissoftware.com/shogi-game-notation/
- 4. http://www.chessvariants.com/shogi.html (+ jap)
- 14. http://www.shogi.net/arc/games/ (N3g, diagrams jap) and http://www.shogi.net/nexus/ (N3g)
- 21. https://www.playok.com/en/shogi/
- 22. http://www.iggamecenter.com/info/en/shogi.html
- 32. https://play.mogproject.com (diagram generator)
- 38. https://www.gnu.org/software/gnushogi/manual/The-rules-of-shogi.html
- 2. English shogi books.
- Shogi for Beginners, John Fairbairn
- Better Moves for Better Shogi, Aono Teruichi, trans. Fairbairn
- Introduction to Handicap Play, Larry Kaufman
- 3. Shogi software. (Actually, most shogi software is Japanese and uses Japanese notation. Could use more data here.)
- Kifu Free - Android app
- GNU shogi
- 4. Portable Shogi Notation (PSN) standard (https://genedavissoftware.com/shogi/portable-shogi-notation/)
- Based on this overwhelming evidence, I think it behooves us to switch back to Hodges notation. You are welcome to supply counter-arguments and pointers to more recent literature that uses Hosking notation. --IanOsgood (talk) 03:51, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
- (One idea to make this transition and future policy decisions less painful is to use templates for shogi moves and move lists, with an optional parameter for the preferred display notation, similar to how we have date templates for i18n support. I'm not enough of a template expert to know if this is feasible. --IanOsgood (talk) 03:51, 13 December 2017 (UTC))