From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Wed Apr 18 11:00:52 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 18 Apr 2001 18:00:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 25736 invoked from network); 18 Apr 2001 18:00:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 18 Apr 2001 18:00:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.169.75.101) by mta1 with SMTP; 18 Apr 2001 18:00:50 -0000 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 14pwG0-00024w-00 for ; Wed, 18 Apr 2001 11:00:48 -0700 Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 11:00:48 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Dictionary format Message-ID: <20010418110048.R26996@digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban@onelist.com References: <01041719525609.29765@neofelis> <01041501150602.16694@neofelis> <01041719201508.29765@neofelis> <20010417163914.C26996@digitalkingdom.org> <01041719525609.29765@neofelis> <20010417165926.E26996@digitalkingdom.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20010418133741.00be7c40@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.17i In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418133741.00be7c40@127.0.0.1>; from lojbab@lojban.org on Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 01:42:40PM -0400 From: Robin Lee Powell X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 6648 On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 01:42:40PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote: [on using full-length dictionary entries] > >and if we were actually trying to do a real dictionary, we'd need to > >have entries, or sub-entries, for each of those meanings. > > My original intent was to do exactly that, using a commonly available > dictionary as the source of word meanings. Given their availability, I > would probably use one of the out-of-copyright dictionaries now available > on the net, which would have such information for words and definitions > used prior to 75 years ago. > > But space would make this impossible (even if the volunteers were > available) - the resulting text would necessarily be longer than the > English-only dictionary, since it would have all that text as well as the > Lojban. Printing costs are too high to include an English dictionary in > with the E-L dictionary. Right. Now, forget about lojban for a second. Normally, foreign language dictionaries just do a list of keywords, right? honour (n): foo(x1), bar(x2), baz(x3). Where foo, bar, and baz are words in the other language, each of which may more or less match the word 'honour' in english (a la the cf. list in the lojban definitions), and the x? are the parts of speech in that other language those words belong to, or what verb group they're in, or something. Then it is assumed that for explication the user goes to the long definition in a dictionary _in_ _the_ _other_ _language_. Now, pretend that we had enough volunteers to do that. We could make a dictionary of lujvo and fu'ivla in lojban (wherein we would probably have the basic gismu and most of the cmavo as being assumed that the user already knows them). Then we could make a simple keyword based English <-> Lojban dictionary that'd be short and stuff. However, and correct me if I'm wrong lojbab, since we don't have enough volunteers (and that may change once we get the web-based stuff going) we're going to sort of mush the two concepts together and have a dictionary where the Lojban -> English side is keyword based, but the English -> Lojban side has full definitions. Now this leads me to ask, lojbab, what information those 'full definitions' will have. Will it just be a keyword in English and then a place structure definition based on the gismu's places (i.e. what's currently in the lujvo file) or will there be more than that? Are you aiming for something like engdict.gis? -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. le datni cu djica le nu zifre .iku'i .oi le so'e datni cu to'e te pilno je xlali -- RLP http://www.lojban.org/