Notes on a match

#Where a note can go

A note is written on one thing, and it is shown where that thing is:

To write on a candidate play, select its row in the table of plays first; the Add a note button then names the play it will write on. A row that has a note carries a small speech bubble after its equity.

A note on a play belongs to the play, not to one analysis of it. Run the match again at another depth, or open another analysis of it, and the note stays on that play wherever the new list ranks it.

#Writing and editing Standard

Notes save themselves as you type, a moment after you stop. Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) or Done saves and closes the note, and Escape leaves the text box without closing it. What you have typed is kept on this device until it has saved, so a closed tab or a dropped connection loses nothing.

A note keeps the line breaks you type, and takes a little formatting: **bold**, *italic*, ~~struck~~, `code` , lines starting with - or 1. for a list, > for a quote, and [text](https://...) for a link (a bare web address works too). Anything else is shown exactly as typed.

A move written in the usual notation, like 13/7 8/7, bar/22* or 6/off, and a point named like your 5-point or their 20-point, are underlined with dots. Point at one, or tab to it, and the board shows it: the move as arrows, the point highlighted, on the position the note is about. The explanations the Why? button gives work the same way.

Each note is Public or Private. A public note is seen by everyone who can see the match, including everyone once you make the match public. A private note is seen by you alone.

You can edit and delete your own notes. On your own match you can also remove a public note somebody else wrote, which cannot be undone; deleting your own note offers an Undo for a few seconds.

Writing notes is part of the Standard and Pro plans, and a note needs the match saved to your account: a match held only in this browser has nowhere to keep one. Reading notes needs neither.

If you change the moves of a match, the notes on its moves no longer point at the moves they were written on, so they are removed. Notes on the match and on its games are kept.

#Drawing on the board

Holding Shift on any board lets you point at something: drag for an arrow, click a point for a highlight. That is a sketch. It is gone when you let go of Shift, and nobody else sees it.

On a match you can write notes on, the board's ⋯ menu has Draw on the board. While it is on, the same Shift strokes are saved instead, on the move on screen, and a row under the board says where they are going; Done in that row turns it off. A stroke goes on the note you are writing if it is on that move, and otherwise on a note of drawings of your own for the move, which is public. Arrows and highlights can start or end on a point, on the bar or on a borne-off tray.

Draw adds five colours to pick from. Auto draws as Shift always has, in the colour of the checker an arrow leaves; the other four are green, red, blue and yellow. An arrow looks like the analysis's move arrows, with a faint checker where it lands. Drawing the same arrow again adds another, so 6/4 twice shows two checkers moving. Highlighting a point again in the same colour removes the highlight, and in another colour changes its colour. Undo takes back your last stroke on the move, and Clear mine removes all of your drawings from it.

On a phone there is no Shift, so while Draw is on a tap draws: tap a point, then tap where the arrow goes, or tap the same point twice to highlight it.

Drawings belong to the position before the move, so they are shown on the before and arrows boards and not on after. Pointing at a note brings its drawings to the front and dims the others, and Show drawings in the Notes list takes them all off the board. Show notes beside it hides notes everywhere except that list: under the analysis, in the move list and on the board. Both switches are remembered for each match. Drawing is not possible while you write a note on the match or on a game, which have no board of their own.

#Sharing a match with a coach

A match you have saved to your account can be opened by people you invite, while it stays private to everyone else. Open Share on the match; under People, pick what they can do (Can add notes or Can view) and press Create invite link. The link is copied for you to send however you like, or press Email beside it to have it mailed to an address.

A link works once: the first account to open it joins the match, and it expires after 7 days. Revoke stops a link nobody has used yet. Inviting is open on every plan; writing notes is not, so a coach who is to add notes needs Standard or Pro on their own account.

Matches other people have shared with you are on the Matches page, under the Shared with me tab, which appears once something has been shared with you. The match somebody wrote on or shared with you most recently is at the top. Each row says how many notes it has, how many of them are yours, and who wrote the last one and when; a match nobody has written on yet says when it was shared. The search box finds a match by its players' names.

Leave, in a row's ⋯ menu, takes you off a match, and the owner can remove you in the Share dialog. Either way the notes you wrote on that match are deleted, and the confirmation says how many.

If the owner deletes the match, it leaves your list and its links stop working; if they restore it, it comes back with your notes on it. When the owner makes a match public, its public notes are published with it, yours included, and the Share dialog says how many notes by other people that is.

When someone you invited writes or edits public notes on your match, you get an email saying so. Notes are gathered rather than sent one by one: the email goes an hour after they stop writing, one email covers every match, and you get at most one a day. Turn it off with Notes on my matches in Settings.

#Publishing a match

The Share dialog offers three levels. Private keeps the match to you and the people you invited. Anyone with the link lets whoever holds the link view it and its analysis, read-only. Published does that too, and lists the match under Watch in the top bar, on the Annotated matches tab of the archive, where anyone can find it by its players, its event or its description. Publishing is the owner's, on any plan.

Only a match with a public note can be published: the shelf is for annotated matches, and a match without notes is shared by its link. The Share dialog says so when that is why Published cannot be chosen.

A published match is listed with its public notes, under the display names of the people who wrote them. Before you publish, the Share dialog names whose notes those are and how many each wrote. An author with no display name is counted on the shelf and never named, and a private note is never listed.

If you write notes for other people, an owner can publish a match you wrote public notes on, and your notes are then listed with it under your display name. Without one you are counted on the shelf rather than named, and your notes show as Anonymous everywhere else, on the match's own page and in the Share dialog, and carry no author in an exported file. Your email address is never shown in its place. Set a display name in Settings to have your notes carry it. Make a note private to keep it off the archive.

Anyone with the link or Private takes the match off the shelf again, and publishing it later lists it under the date it was first published. Deleting the match takes it off too, and restoring it puts it back. A match a moderator takes off the archive stays off: the Share dialog says so, and Published cannot be chosen for it again. A match whose public notes can no longer be shown drops off the shelf by itself, and returns when they can.

Each row on the shelf offers the match's .mat file and Download with notes, the OGXM JSON file with its public notes.

#Notes in files

Download with notes, at the top of the Notes list, saves the match as an OGXM JSON file with the notes that list shows: an author you have hidden there is left out of the file, and a private note is only ever in its own author's download. Where the server can write notes into the binary format, a .ogxm button beside it saves the same notes in an .ogxm file. The analysis page's own .mat and .ogxm downloads carry no notes, and say so when the match has some.

In that file a note on a cube decision or on one play stays on its decision when the file holds an analysis of it. Otherwise it is written on the move, starting with the play or with Cube: so it still says what it was about.

Comments in an imported match come in as notes: eXtreme Gammon's comments on the match, a game, a move or a cube decision, the comments in a GNU Backgammon .sgf file, BGBlitz's in a .bgf file, and the notes of an OGXM file. The import says how many there are, and they arrive when the match is saved to your account. Each is shown under the name of the program that wrote the file, or the author the file names, and is public. On your own match you can make one private, which leaves it to you alone, or remove it; its text stays as the file had it.

When a link opens a public match on one move, the preview a chat app makes of it shows that move's board with the public arrows and highlights drawn on it.

#Finding notes again

The Notes button in the toolbar above the analysis, a speech bubble, lists every note you can see in match order, grouped by game and move. Click a note to go to it. A dot on the button means the match has notes.

At the top of that list is one button per author, with the number of notes they wrote. Click one to hide that author's notes everywhere on the page, and again to bring them back. The choice is remembered on this device, for this match.

In the move list, a move with a note carries a blue speech bubble, and a game with a note carries one on its divider. The Notes filter above the list keeps only the moves with notes, and while it is on, the arrows beside the move list step from note to note. N and Shift+N do the same from anywhere on the page.

On the Matches page, a match with notes shows how many in a small speech bubble, and the Notes filter keeps the matches with any notes, the ones with notes by other people (what a coach has gone through), or the ones with none.