From lojban+bncCL-Ey5qiChCtjv3dBBoEZuV9GQ@googlegroups.com Fri Apr 09 08:27:04 2010 Received: from mail-yx0-f140.google.com ([209.85.210.140]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O0G6l-0002U5-MD for lojban-list-archive@lojban.org; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:27:04 -0700 Received: by yxe4 with SMTP id 4sf1604909yxe.28 for ; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:53 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:mime-version:received:in-reply-to :references:date:received:message-id:subject:from:to :x-original-authentication-results:x-original-sender:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :x-thread-url:x-message-url:sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe :content-type; bh=9bbE0ythh65r91gE0bVuiw4X3WAlfhQHYRh/M73T6/s=; b=RcPqBhNRO72dDlJPjjAPQvtqDK7XXrqjIFsNg4BWy6TSq3qK44aEuaqIQ9bqVNrPeF A5rczamDM8XQJOSd8SbOT1ZPlb6E9PTt+eQQRkLl1wgfh15wt9rYi2UQX1fYmxyynjBr Mjec7tDmMub2VnhhKuJuUr86ROGOX9Zkv4ih0= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-authentication-results :x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:x-thread-url:x-message-url:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=QM8alpCM6wtkN1FCXieZoxXQmssMnK3y2Wz60fOeFStmhQFfc6xQieGZi5yyjprvq+ 2ksDznZwMOe+4btNx2uAiEmGjUH3D6Arks2WbPd/wvRvo/rN/2Mr9Jh9pS/mc8OANX9E 6GQtkzymf9E2eqoZz9kGVGT5XSSCzF9S5F+0E= Received: by 10.91.185.15 with SMTP id m15mr69138agp.19.1270826797311; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:37 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.204.6.77 with SMTP id 13ls305715bky.3.p; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.154.65 with SMTP id n1mr17264bkw.30.1270826795632; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.154.65 with SMTP id n1mr17262bkw.30.1270826795598; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-qy0-f177.google.com (mail-qy0-f177.google.com [209.85.221.177]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id a10si1536956bkc.1.2010.04.09.08.26.34; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:34 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of craigbdaniel@gmail.com designates 209.85.221.177 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.221.177; Received: by qyk7 with SMTP id 7so1342932qyk.6 for ; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:33 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.229.87.140 with HTTP; Fri, 9 Apr 2010 08:26:33 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 11:26:33 -0400 Received: by 10.229.216.76 with SMTP id hh12mr191864qcb.47.1270826793454; Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:26:33 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] Tangent the second: ASCII From: Craig Daniel To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of craigbdaniel@gmail.com designates 209.85.221.177 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=craigbdaniel@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com X-Original-Sender: craigbdaniel@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: X-Thread-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/t/d319d5cadc183c24 X-Message-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/msg/5fc0c684aa471f7 Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Jonathan Jones wrote: > > That said, while I am not *against* using diacritic marking instead of > capitals, that is pretty much the extent of my non-ASCII in Lojban > acceptance. > I like it for handwriting, but where computers are involved I think there are good reasons to stick to ASCII. Not because that restrictive a set is required, but because keeping it there absent any compelling reason not to (and Lojban, unlike some languages, has no need to do otherwise) is good. But I also think capital letters in the middle of words look ugly, and I think they draw your eye to them more than accent marks do and can turn into feeling like that word is being emphasized when it's not instead of like that word has odd stress specified, so I'm also in favor of indicating stress by means of diacritics. I don't like the idea of changing the language spec over it, or of giving up on ASCII-only and making people have to edit all software that cares, but in a vacuum I prefer it and if the language were being created in this era of Unicode I'd be a strong proponent of that as the standard instead of capitalization. The reason I suggested an alternate font is that it lets you have your cake and eat it too. The letters are all ASCII, no matter how you're stressing the words, so for computers it represents no change in the standards and it captures all the benefits of the restricted character set. The computer doesn't care how the font you're using renders the characters, just what character codes they map to; you could make every glyph look like a dot in slightly different positions and while it would be totally unreadable to humans it would be the same thing from a machine's perspective. Ergo, using the diacritics-as-capitals font means that from a machine-processing perspective all your Lojban is the same as it's always been, and it's all ASCII-only. But for humans, it shows up as the alternate convention, which I personally consider vastly better from an aesthetic perspective and which I suspect is also more readable. It's the best of both worlds. It also means that how it appears depends on the reader's preferences rather than the writer's, since it means the two are just different renderings of the same underlying standard. If the writer specs the text as being Lojban or says that's the font it's in and capitalizes only the vowel in the stress-specified syllable, then if the reader is looking at it with a stylesheet that says Lojban is in that font and has that font, it shows up with an accent on the vowel. If the reader doesn't have the font installed, it gets rendered as whatever font their software defaults to, and they see no change. So for those who favor kaptalo over diacritics, it's trivial to keep it that way - just don't install the font. Lojban will look like it always has. If you do like diacritics, you have to install a new font to see them since they're being sent to your machine as ASCII characters for uppercase letters rather than lowercase letters with accents on them, but it's not like it's hard to add new fonts. I propose agreeing on a font modified from something verifiably open (or built from scratch, but why bother?) rather than something that might actually just be Verdana in a funny hat (mostly because I'd like to see the Lojbanized version be open-source, and nobody has the right to license it thus if it is derived from Verdana and we didn't realize it); the first easy-to-read font of known provenance to come along would make a good choice of standard. I'm happy to take a crack at putting one together, but my life is fairly busy at present (between part-time school and part-time work that add up to more than a full-time commitment, plus Lojban not getting top billing among my hobby projects right now) and I'd have to learn the basics of using a font editor. The latter is something I kinda want to try anyhow, so at some point I'll get to work on that, but it'll be a while and if somebody else who actually knows what they're doing beats me to it, so much the better. Once we've got one distributed, I'd like Lojban web stuff to serve Lojban text in that font wherever possible. (Maybe make the wiki have a "Lojban text" tag of some sort that defaults to that?) Then adopt an unofficial community standard that only the nucleus of a stress-specified syllable should be capitalized; the other way is still valid, of course (I don't see this as an issue it's worth changing any part of the baselined language over!), but the one-capital-per-syllable approach would be preferred. I personally like that better anyhow, since syllabification varies a little from person to person when consonant clusters are involved and the correct way to specify it if you care is with slaka.bu rather than changes in capitalization. That's an insignificant thing now, but if a lot of people are looking at it in a diacritic font it's mildly important since it makes the text not look like ass. The end result of this is that folks who like seeing diacritics get Lojban that looks prettier to them, with no change to the orthographic specifications of the language. - mi'e .kreig.daniyl. who also really will get around to scanning exemplars of his Lojban calligraphic hand and sharing his other musings on Lojbanic writing sooner or later -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.