Message-Id: <9202080245.AA03460@relay2.UU.NET>
Date:         Fri, 7 Feb 1992 17:54:33 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!lojbab>
Sender: Lojban list <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!LOJBAN>
From: Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!lojbab>
Subject:      plans
To: John Cowan <cowan@snark.thyrsus.com>
Status: RO

Major and I have been having an email discussion that I think everyone should
participate in, if they want to influence what is going on.  Following is
 excerpted from
our exchange.

>= Major
no mark = Lojbab

We haven't decided whether to prepare a mail-order of the new gismu list,
independent of the book.  We hope to have a book out wiothin a few weeks
though (months?  years?)

>Will the book include as real dictionary (IE with definitions) or just a
>word list with some indication of place structures like the current
>gismu lists?

[Regarding sralo distribution of word lists, etc., wherein our printed
distribution versions are shortly to be obsolete.]

This doesn't help sralo, etc. people, of course. Opinions sought.

>Unless you tell me not to, I will print lists from the PLS for anyone
>who wants them between now and the publication of the book.  Thereafter
>I will point people at the book (I presume that it will supercede the
>draft lessons as well).

Probably if WE offer the lists [after the books are published], they
will be at a premium so as to encourage people to buy the book.

>Unless the price of the book is totaly outragious, I see not need to
>continue to offer word lists. Word lists are not much use one their
>own.

The PLS lists are free and public - and you and anyone else are free to
copy and distribute them.

There is more than one book being talked about, and more than one
generation of the books being planned.

Generation 1

1st out will be a reference book, which might end up as two books. it
will have

a) updated versions of all of the existing lists.  In the case of the
gismu, this will mean newer, more complete information woithin the place
structure, but not 'definitions' in the standard dictionary sense.
Indeed, it is not entirely clear that a standard dictionary definition
distinct from a place structure is all that applicable to Lojban
predicate words, since for any such word you have to define the places
that go into each word as well as the relation between them - and the
existing place structures, although abbreviated, to just that.  What
will be improved is the English look-up capability, so that many more
English words will point into the Lojban word lists, and presumably to a
limited extent, vice versa.  Not anywhere near what I intend the
dictionary to be in the long term, but I think much more useful than
what we have now.

b) reference style description of the grammar.  Cowan has written papers
on Mex and tenses, and is working on logical connection.  We also have
the old negation paper that will be updated.

c) a good glossary of technical terms that we use.

2nd will be an update of the draft textbook, but also including some
other teaching materials from JL, and the draft 1st lesson of the new
textbook and the minilesson.

Generation 2

Cowan and I will eventually have papers on all facets of the grammar,
about a dozen in all, that will be assembled into a single book.

The new version of the textbook will be completed.

There will be a reader, with updated and corrected versions of a lot of
the Lojban text that has flown by, graded by difficulty.

An updated dictionary - more dictionary like this time, if only in
having more extensive coverage.  I'd like to have a few thousand lujvo
in the 2nd generation book.

The generation 2 materials will serve as the 5-year baseline.

Comments welcome - does this plan sound like what YOU need to learn the
language, or what you think others need?  What can we do better?

>Generation one sounded like a collection of technical reports rather
>than a learner's text. Obviously, if you are keen enough, you can
>learn from anything but it does not sound like you will be making it
>easy for people until well into generation 2.

Generation 1 is little more than a repackaging and updating of what is
already done, so it is self-consistent, adding in a little extra to
smooth out the bumps.  That is all we have time for, given that I have
been trying to put these out 'in a couple of months' since Chassell
convinced us to go for it last June.  It has turned out that merely
trying to make what we have self-consistent while adapting to ever
growing usage by others is a truly difficult task.

But it will be worth it.  Nick and Colin and Ivan and Mark and Bob
Chassell and ... have shown that what we have is enough for people to
learn at a distance, to get our language speaker base growing, and our
usage data not limited to the DC dialect.

And I think you will find that the 96 character definitions for gismu,
and whatever auxiliary information we find time to add in will make thge
result much more useful than the existing, and satisfactory-for-some
40-character lists.

Books are also is a commitment to stability and to wholeness of the
language on our part.  People have said - "let me know when the books
are done", with the implication that they won't believe that WE believe
the language is ready until we commit to bound print.  So we will give
them books.  Books also can be put into libraries enhancing our
outreach, be sold as quick-filling unit orders rather than our
hodgepodge-confusing order form, and serve as the basis/excuse for
serious advertising outside the immediate community.

Those generation 1 'technical reports', as And has said, form the most
explicitly detailed conlang design ever prior to people learning it.
Esperanto has made it where it is on the basis of 16 rules, sets of ten
2-page mail-in lessons and simple dictionaries.  By that standard,
Lojban even now is almost overdefined.

lojbab