From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Dec 26 22:47:11 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:47:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1J7mWJ-0007r8-Nt for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:47:11 -0800 Received: from squid17.laughingsquid.net ([72.32.93.144]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1J7mW3-0007qd-PJ for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:47:00 -0800 Received: (qmail 28970 invoked by uid 48); 26 Dec 2007 22:19:55 -0800 Received: from c-24-63-92-33.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (c-24-63-92-33.hsd1.ma.comcast.net [24.63.92.33]) by webmail.ixkey.info (Horde MIME library) with HTTP; Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:19:55 -0800 Message-ID: <20071226221955.bktr29rj4g4sccw4@webmail.ixkey.info> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:19:55 -0800 From: mungojelly@ixkey.info To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Orthography References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.1.4) X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 61 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mungojelly@ixkey.info Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Quoting Danny : > Is there much of a push for alternative scripts for Lojban? I have > been particularly interested in learning about using Tengwar instead > of the more traditional Latin script. I've had an idea of inventing a two-dimensional script for Lojban. Two-dimensional in the sense Saizai describes here: http://saizai.livejournal.com/657391.html It would actually be more than just an alternative script. It would also be a fundamentally different way of writing, with a two-dimensional grammar. The reason I thought of using Lojban, though, is that the changes to the grammar would be very minimal-- Lojban's grammar is already multidimensional; a stream of text is a 1d stream that gets parsed & then folds like a protein into a many dimensional shape. For instance, if you have the sentence written: .i le gerku cu blabi (The dog is white.) You can insert the phrase "poi mi prami" (which I love) after "gerku", and assuming it's properly terminated (the "cu" suffices in this case) what you've done is unambiguously added a branch to the parse tree. If you're writing two dimensionally, you don't have to worry about shoehorning new branches into a line & unambiguously terminating them-- you can just run as many lines from the end of "gerku" as you need, to show various phrases that attach to it. I've been working (intermittently) on a cursive script which is independent of direction (sideways, upsidedown, etc) with which to explore the possibility. If anyone else is interested you're welcome to help. I think it would be a neat way to write letters on paper. mu'o mi'e. bret.