From mark@kli.org Fri Sep 17 10:51:28 1999 X-Digest-Num: 236 Message-ID: <44114.236.1281.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: 17 Sep 1999 17:51:28 -0000 From: mark@kli.org Subject: Re: Lojban word processor for Windows? >From: David Brookshire Conner >Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 07:26:12 -0400 (EDT) >Cc: lojban@onelist.com > >From: David Brookshire Conner > >Oddly enough I was thinking about just this problem this morning as I >was walking to work. In particular, Loglan's regular structure gives >the text editor lots of help in e.g., automatically typesetting (a la >LaTeX). I was thinking along similar lines wrt typography and typesetting for Lojban (I've been designing a Latin-character Klingon font, with appropriate ligatures, etc). But you can't improve too much on some nice cold monospaced Courier-like fonts for Lojban. It fits the language. > > What I have in mind is something that supports Wordpad style editing (there > > may be some open code already for such a simple editor, since Lojban uses > > the standard alphabet, in which case the programming is mostly in the > > utilities that follow)), > >Another approach, of course, is to write extensions for editors that >support that kind of thing. Emacs comes to mind :-) So does >Framemaker (which runs on everything, though is pricey). > >An Emacs major mode should be straight-forward. I'm a little surprised >one doesn't already exist (or am I wrong here?). Easy stuff like >recognizing sentence structure and piping text to the parser. I *like* that idea. I guess I'm surprised I didn't already write a major mode in emacs. Then again, I also have to keep reminding myself what people are looking for. I still expect word-processors to be just really really good typewriter/typesetter machines, not popping up templates, word-completions (unless you ask), stuff like that. But I'll wager that just an as-you-type cmene-checker would get a workout! >An initial Framemaker extension would consist simply of a document >template with lots of smart "paragraph" styles (with each "paragraph" >in Framemaker being a lojban bridi). For example: > >StartUtterance - first sentence, following "paragraph" is >ContinueUtterance - "autonumbered" to start with ".i " >StartParagraph - autostarts with .ni'o, next para is > continueUtterance. >etc. formatting makes all this look pretty. Maybe indents for .i? >On another tack, a lojban font would be an interesting >problem. Specifically, the ligatures would probably be different from >an English font (as letter frequency is different), and would probably >emphasize the cmavo. See above. I gave that some thought, but didn't come up with anything. Lojban doesn't feel right with much in the way of "real" ligatures (like fi, fl, etc). Typography to make the cmavo more distinctive might be nice, but I'm not sure how. Except maybe to emphasize ".i", but then if you break lines at every jufra (which I personally don't do in writing most of the time) you don't need it. Though you do want to make sure your font does nice things with the apostrophe. Not to much and certainly not too little. Again, monospace seems oddly workable. The overly wide space for the apostrophe makes sure you can't mistake "ta'i" for "tai". > > one which > > would call up the place structure on a mouse click, > >A little trickier but again, primarily just needs a database of the >place structures. Would come in handy, no mistake. > > or give the breakdown > > of a legal but undefined lujvo with a different mouse click. > >and a database of the rafsi.... YES. For building and reading. And one of cmavo? > > And then > > finally you could invoke the parser in a pop-up window for any selected > > chunk of text. > >Emacs is especially good at this..... M-x compile. ~mark