1.7.0: Feature release

Summary

Version 1.7.0 is a feature release. It was published on the App Store on September 18 2022.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Features

Smart Game Format (SGF) support:

• The app now supports reading and writing of all SGF node annotation and move annotation properties (#339). The app also displays these properties' values and lets you edit them. This means that you can now add a valuation to a move (e.g. good/bad move) and/or to the entire board position (e.g. good position for black/white), designate a board position to be a "hotspot" (e.g. it contains a game-deciding move), annotate a board position with an estimated score, and finally you can add textual notes to a board position. Annotation data is displayed by, and can be edited via, an all-new annotation view.
• The app now supports reading and writing of all SGF markup properties (#349). Except for the DD property (dim parts of the board), the app also displays these properties' values and lets you edit them. This means that you can now mark intersections on the board with 5 different symbols (circle, square, triangle, "X" mark, "selected" symbol), place single-character letter markers or single-digit number markers, place a free-form label text, and finally you can draw arrows or plain lines on the board. The app has an all-new markup editing mode for this (accessible via menu icon) that includes drag & drop support to move around existing markup.
• A notable consequence of these additions is that board positions without moves are now possible when loaded from an SGF file (e.g. a board position that contains only markup and/or annotations), but you cannot create such positions yet from within the app. This feature will be added in the next release.
• In the Settings screen there are now a number of user preferences that affect how markup is drawn and that let you tweak some aspects of the markup editing process.

Improvements and changes

• The general user interface (UI) of Little Go now looks and behaves the same on all device types (#371). This unification of UI layouts became necessary because the effort to support different layouts proved to be too much. Also the unification provided the opportunity to get rid of many behind-the-scenes hacks. The main changes are: 1) Smaller iPhone devices which only support the Portrait orientation UI layout, now display board positions and the navigation buttons differently than before. 2) Larger iPhone devices now display a tab bar when in Landscape orientation (alas, reducing the size of the board). 3) iPad devices now always show board positions when in Portrait orientation, and when in Landscape orientation they display board positions and navigation buttons differently than before.
• Changed the icon of the "More Game Actions" button (#377). The previous icon was a "curved arrow" symbol, which seemed to confuse many users so that they couldn't find important actions, such as "New game". The new icon is the established "hamburger menu" icon, which should now more clearly indicate that the button pops up a menu with actions to select from.
• Button boxes and the board position list now support Dark mode by switching to a dark background color (#378 and #379). Thanks to Peter Waldispühl for reporting this.
• Coordinate labels are now drawn at the board edge instead of at the screen edge (#147).
• The "Last move" marker is now drawn in red color, to distinguish it from the new Square markup symbol (#396).
• The Go board is now always properly centered within the screen space that is available to it (#367).
• Little Go has a technical limit for the number of moves that can be played in a single game (in case you wonder: the limit currently is 1394 moves). The app now explicitly checks for this limit when you attempt to place a stone or pass (#381).

Bugfixes

• Board position zero (representing the start of the game) sometimes did not display handicap and komi. This is now fixed (#374).
• Speculative fix for a potential app crash when the board setup is changed but somehow the board displays a position after the start of the game (#366). Instead of crashing the app now displays an alert.
• Two speculative fixes (#369 and #370) for potential app crashes in a wide variety of circumstances.
• Another set of fixes (#364) that helps with app stability and avoids a number of potential app crashes.

Regressions

• A bug was introduced in version 1.6.0 that would cause Ko detection to fail after the app was suspended and was forced to restart by the operating system (a relatively common occurrence). This is now fixed (#372). Because Little Go has struggled with Ko detection many times in the past, this regression was particularly painful.

Technical changes

• The project has been upgraded to the iOS 15.2 SDK and Xcode 13.2.1.
• The following third party software has been upgraded to new versions: Cocoa Lumberjack (from 3.7.0 to 3.7.4) and Firebase Crashlytics (from 4.6.2 to 8.11.0).
• SGF files that were previously locally maintained have now been added to version control (commit f6aa17e). The manual testing script in the TESTING document can now be played through by anyone.