Message-Id: <199601281725.TAA08287@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sun, 28 Jan 1996 11:26:45 -0600
Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Subject:      publication
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2227
Lines: 53

la lojbab cusku dihe

>Now I believe we are planning that the book-material will be available in
>final form on-net, but I am not sure in what form.  Probably something TeX
>related, which of course is totally unintelligible to those in the MS-DOS
>world.

1. Agree that publication in book form is essential for lojban to be taken
seriously.

2. Hope that loglan central will consider using those of us on the list to
debug (proofread?) final versions of materials eventually intended for
paper publication. Am not suggesting we get veto power (otherwise it will
*never* get published). Just suggesting that the various bits and pieces be
assembled into a crude HTML document so we can peruse the whole thing in
one piece off line looking for errors/inconsistencies. (The WWW lojban site
is almost what I am suggesting, except the lookup engine is platform
dependent, it is not clear which things are outdated and which are new, and
there is no index)

3. There are TeX interpreters for all platforms. Some of these are freeware
or shareware. Mathematica by Wolfram Research (expensive, but good) can
read most TeX things. Not sure TeX is the best on-line distribution format.
(Good format to send to the publisher, though)

4. For a dictionary, thesaurus or grammer, an online HTML or Java document
would have some advantages over a paper document, (capability of
hyperlinks, fast look up, bookmarking, relational data-base reordering)
Paper is nice though. Its physical, and is more consistent with my previous
suggestion of versioning. Its fairly easy to change an electronic document
without users really noticing right away.

5. After refgrammer & dictionary are done, it would be nice to have a
phrasebook. This could be put on the FAQ section of the www page. This
would be a good way to show netsurfers how the language works. Actually,
we've already started:

<.i lemi varkicyvinji ku culno lo finprsanguiliforme>

"My hovercraft is full of eels".

Surely an essential phrase in any phrasebook.

-cohomihe la stivn


Steven M. Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

email: sbelknap@uic.edu
Voice: 309/671-3403
Fax:   309/671-8413