From nsn  Sat Mar  6 22:53:00 2010
From: nsn (Nick Nicholas)
Subject: Re: New parser version outputs in Prolog format!
To: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com (John Cowan)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 12:02:33 +1000 (EST)
Cc: nsn (Nick Nicholas)
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Message-ID: <26CQcsy1lzP.A.6T.M10kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

The Seraphim surely rejoiced when John Cowan spoke thus:

#I know this is too late to help with the project, but could you give me
#some feedback on the following?  As part of a redesign of the parser's
#output facilities, I added a Prolog-format option, plus a separate
#full-parse option that presents all rules.

#Please note that all apostrophes have been h-ified, that selma'o names
#are lowercased, and that inserted elidables are also lowercased.

I'm very happy with it; it should prove quite handy for any future NLP work
on Lojban. The one point I can think of: compounds already handled by the
lexer in the parser will show up as such, won't they? For example, {.ije}
won't be analysed as I+JE, but as LEXER_S or whichever lexer it is. Given
the vagaries of YACC parsing, that's fair. 

The output will in fact prove helpful not only to NLP workers, but to people
learning Lojban in general. I can't think of any way to improve output format
that wouldn't turn out implausible. However, the display option -r of the 
current parser should be retained alongside it, I feel; some will find it
easier to read.

*******************************************************************************
 A freshman once observed to me:         Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz.
 On the edge of the Rubicon,             nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
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