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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:50:07 -0800 (PST)
From: "A. PIEKARSKI" <totus@rogers.com>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: vlatai and logflash
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
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----- Original Message ----
> From: Oren <get.oren@gmail.com>
> To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
> Sent: Sun, December 20, 2009 8:55:49 PM
> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: vlatai and logflash
> 
> I'd like to help build a site for beginners! One that would
> (1) Have a flexible lojban-lesson framework
> (2) Have a learner's forum so that beginners know they're not alone
> (3) Provide a "gateway" to introduce the wiki, ways to help, how to
> use applications etc.
> 
> ...the way I see it, there's two users and so (at least the appearance
> of) two sites would make things more orderly.
> 
> Category 1: Experienced people. They're likely not fluent in lojban,
> but they're literate. They may be amateur or professional linguists,
> programmers or just self-motivated, and so they treat lojban very
> differently; more like a programming language; i.e. a tool or
> resource. So it's completely natural that there be an online place to
> post builds, projects, ideas and esoteric debates for lojban.
> 
> Category 2: New people. They hear about lojban and see lojban.org and
> think "Hey, maybe I'll try to learn this." And then they go view one
> of the several endorsed learning materials. But they treat lojban like
> a human language, and there's nowhere to ask questions on the site,
> and no user forum (so no way of knowing that others are studying too).
> So when they come back to visit and try to find more materials, they
> see a bunch of seemingly non-functional 'works in progress' mixed in
> with vocabulary lists-- and they don't come back a third time.
> 
> My impression is that nearly all lojbanists on the mailing lists or
> active on one of the websites (jbotcan, lojban.org, jbovlaste) are
> self-motivated and geeky, (that is, of category 1), and that with
> growing interest worldwide in information technology, multilingualism
> or globalization or whatever, the category 2 user is going to come
> more and more often, and they're the people who really need a
> "website," not a development wiki. And lots of category 2 users don't
> use mailing lists, irc, or google wave.
> 
> My impression of how lojban is used online:
> 
> lojban.org -> LLG's official web presence, for everyone*
> jbovlaste -> active vocabulary development, for category 1 lojban-geeks
> jbotcan, -> active discussion, for category 1 lojban-geeks
> irc, mailing lists, google wave -> active communication, mostly
> category 1 lojban-geeks*
> 
> *growing category 2 lojban-beginner population
> 
> What I think is missing:
> beginner website -> Beginner's resources, discussion, intro to lojban
> development
> 
> Or am I way off? I hope that makes sense....
> 
> mu'o mi'e .ku'us.
> 
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 00:47, Colin Wright
> wrote:
> > I'm not in a convenient place to create long, clear, expository emails.
> > This will not be as complete as I would like.  However, you seem to be
> > confused about something for which I might be able to help.
> >
> > You said:
> >
> >> The reference to jbofihe (which includes valatai) is on:
> >> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Dictionaries%2C+Glossers+and+parsers
> >> 'jbofihe' is linked to an address which allows you to download
> >> jbofihe-snap_20030418.tar.tar which supposedly includes vlatai.
> >> How do I unpack it to get at vlatai? Certainly, WinZip doesn't
> >> do it.
> >
> > The only reference I can find takes me to http://www.rc0.org.uk/jbofihe/
> >
> > There we can find a table, the first entry gives this information:
> >
> > | Version : snap_20030418
> > | Released : 18 April 2003
> > | Status : Current trial release
> > | Source code distribution : Available by HTTP (link)
> > | MSDOS binary distribution : None
> >
> > The link you probably refer to is this one:
> >
> > http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/jbofihe/jbofihe-snap_20030418.tar.gz
> >
> > Note: This is a source code distribution, not an executable.  It does
> > not, as you say, link to jbofihe-snap_20030418.tar.tar  It might be that
> > Windows helpfully renames it into that.  However, it is a compressed
> > tar file, easily uncompressed and extracted on every system I use, and
> > created using systems that have readily available, free distribution.
> > It does not contain a program you can run.  It has source code that you
> > will need to compile.
> >
> > Probably WinZip isn't one of the packages that can extract it, and you
> > probably don't have a compiler unless you're into programming.
> >
> > It may be that Windows has already decompressed it.  I wouldn't know.
> > Windows does try to be helpful, and I can never work out what it's done.
> >
> >> References to both of these appear on the Wiki on the
> >> pages most likely to be used by beginners.  This is not
> >> where we want to discourage them from going further!
> >
> > You have absolutely no argument from me here, but these are packages
> > produced by people with more enthusiasm than time.  Clear, complete
> > and professional packages take time.  A lot of time.  I certainly
> > don't have time to work on the literally hundreds of things that
> > I think could be better.
> >
> > Further, most of these packages are produced by people using Linux and
> > without access to development tools on Windows.  After all, Linux comes
> > for free with compilers or interpreters for C, C++, Python, AWK, Perl and
> > more, and there are freely downloadable packages for languages such as
> > Pascal, Ruby, OCaml, Haskell, Common Lisp, Scheme, and many more.
> >
> > Windows comes with Solitaire.
> >
> > Making Windows packages is non-trivial.
> >
> > I use jbofi'e all the time.  Downloading, unpacking, compiling and running
> > was a trivial exercise.  I've never worked with LogFlash - I had much the
> > same problem as you, and I simply gave up.
> >
> > I know that might not help much, but it seems clear that the lojban wiki
> > is made by geeks, and generally is not suitable for non-geeky beginners.
> > If you would like to build a site more suited to the non-geeky beginner
> > then I'm sure people would be happy to provide materials and assistance.
> >
> > Rgds,
> >
> > Colin
> >
> >
> > --
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> >