From lojbab Wed Mar 9 12:25:27 1994 Subject: Re: The Mad Proposals To: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk From: John Cowan Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 12:25:27 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199403082237.AA03745@nfs1.digex.net> from "ucleaar" at Mar 8, 94 10:34:05 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1537 Status: RO Message-ID: la .and. cusku di'e > Lojban Central policy is to fix only what > doesn't work, and changes for the sake of elegance and simplicity > are not countenanced. Correct, if you add ">present< policy". Loglan has historically suffered from a surfeit of changes; people who learned one version found later versions unintelligible, and there was never any formalized structure for change management. LLG's baselining policy has been an attempt (perhaps too rigid) to prevent this. Note that "baselining" is not synonymous with "no change". The grammar, for example, has had two baselines, separated by some 28 changes; the third (hopefully final) baseline will have 33 more. But each has been carefully documented and justified; I applaud Jorge's presentation. > I gather that the policy has wide support, > though I find it rather a shame. If anything, the policy is more strongly supported by the off-Net Lojbanists. > If I had a vote, which I don't, > I'd support Jorge's proposals, unless there turned out to be good > language-internal arguments against them. You do have a vote, like every Lojbanist, and your vote is duly noted. My personal views: I like Jorge's ideas, and if they had come just a little sooner, I'd probably have fought for them. At this point, I'm reluctant to throw away investment in various texts (both Lojban and English) to install them. This paragraph doesn't represent the policy of LLG or its Board. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.