From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Mar 06 20:18:57 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:18:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Lfo01-0005J0-Bz for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:18:57 -0800 Received: from sunflowerriver.org ([205.201.137.24]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Lfnzy-0005Iq-R4 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:18:57 -0800 Received: from sunflowerriver.org (IDENT:h7mcbg2ae46dg0qdayx2@sunflowerriver.org [205.201.137.24] (may be forged)) by sunflowerriver.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n274Im5Z017160 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:18:24 -0700 (MST) Received: (from a@localhost) by sunflowerriver.org (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) id n274IlYq019414 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:18:23 -0700 (MST) Received: by sunflowerriver.org (tmda-sendmail, from uid 1337); Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:18:23 -0700 (MST) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:18:21 -0700 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Lojban/Interactive Fiction panel at Penguicon? Message-ID: <20090307041845.GC14404@sunflowerriver.org> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: From: Alan Post Mail-Followup-To: lojban-list@lojban.org X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.0.3 (Seattle Slew) X-Spam-Score: 1.6 X-Spam-Score-Int: 16 X-Spam-Bar: + X-archive-position: 15350 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: alanpost+keyword+lojban.420f97@sunflowerriver.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Fri, Mar 06, 2009 at 11:08:15PM -0500, Matt Arnold wrote: > Hey jbopre, > > I managed to persuade Andrew Plotkin to attend Penguicon. He is one of > the foremost contemporary authors of Interactive Fiction, AKA "text > adventures". For more information, please see > http://www.brasslantern.org/beginners/ and http://ifdb.tads.org/ > Andrew is giving a talk about programming language design, > specifically the Inform 7 programming language that is a subset of > English used as source code for Interactive Fiction. > > I'm trying to come up with new ideas for panel discussions he can be a > part of. And then I realized, since we have so many Lojbanists > attending Penguicon this year, what if there is a topic that the > Lojban community and Interactive Fiction programmers have in common? > Like parsers. I myself don't know enough to flesh out the concept. Any > other overlap topics? Do you have any help to offer? > > -Matt > I work quite a bit with parsers, but I'm extremely new to lojban. My very first impression, however, is that one interesting thing about interactive fiction parsers is that you pick a subset of english that is flexible enough to be fun, yet not so flexible you make your job too difficult. The interesting thing about an IF game that used lojban for its input is that you'd be able to parse any grammatical sentence, but you're still going to handle roughly the same number of cases you would in an IF game that uses English as its input. I don't know how much time IF authors spend figthing ambiguity or trying to bend the parser to express the solution they have in mind, but my first guess is that this is a relatively small percentage of the total time spent writing IF. But since I have no idea, I'll suggest that a topic on how language parsing both enriches and detracts from the play experience might well be fertile ground for brainstorming ways to explore this same topic in a lojban-specific way. -Alan To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.