From lojban-out@lojban.org Thu May 13 14:46:38 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 18135 invoked from network); 13 May 2004 21:46:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.166) by m22.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 May 2004 21:46:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta5.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 May 2004 21:46:37 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.32) id 1BOO2F-0001qN-O1 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 13 May 2004 14:46:35 -0700 Received: from dsl081-049-134.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([64.81.49.134] helo=chain.digitalkingdom.org) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.32) id 1BOO1U-0001ps-Ae; Thu, 13 May 2004 14:45:48 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 13 May 2004 14:45:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [195.167.170.152] (helo=bowl.fysh.org ident=mail) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA:24) (Exim 4.32) id 1BOO1J-0001pj-Uy for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 13 May 2004 14:45:38 -0700 Received: from zefram by bowl.fysh.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BOO1D-00047f-00; Thu, 13 May 2004 22:45:31 +0100 Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 22:45:31 +0100 Message-ID: <20040513214531.GH16333@fysh.org> References: <20040513183600.GJ4461@digitalkingdom.org> <20040513193917.GC16333@fysh.org> <20040513211121.GS4461@digitalkingdom.org> <20040513212140.GF16333@fysh.org> <20040513212749.GW4461@digitalkingdom.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040513212749.GW4461@digitalkingdom.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i X-archive-position: 7809 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: zefram@fysh.org X-list: lojban-list To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-From: Zefram From: Zefram Reply-To: zefram@fysh.org Subject: [lojban] Re: y: what is it good for? X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 22272 Robin Lee Powell wrote: >*Every* erasure word requires heaps of grammatical wrangling; talking >about "the erasure system" as a unified whole just makes no sense to me >at this point. Each erasure word is handled *utterly* differently. Ah, interesting. I haven't delved into any of the parsers yet. I spoke of "the erasure system" from the point of view of a speaker of the language, to whom they do appear unified. Any way I'd write a Lojban parser would also share a lot of structure. Not wishing to get your hopes up unreasonably, but I think I can improve on all your current parsers, in this and other areas. I'm quite good with machine grammars and parsers. I've witnessed the problems you've had from trying to bend yacc to the task, and I'm not surprised you've had difficulty, it's simply not up to the task. Attempts so far also don't seem to have made the preprocessing stages sufficiently distinct from the primary parsing. It's difficult to get that sort of thing right in a complicated parser, especially the first time round. -zefram