[lojban-beginners] Re: Orthography

[mungojelly@ixkey.info]

Quoting Danny <feedmecereal@gmail.com>:

> Is there much of a push for alternative scripts for Lojban? I have
> been particularly interested in learning about using Tengwar instead
> of the more traditional Latin script.

I've had an idea of inventing a two-dimensional script for Lojban.   
Two-dimensional in the sense Saizai describes here:

http://saizai.livejournal.com/657391.html

It would actually be more than just an alternative script.  It would  
also be a fundamentally different way of writing, with a  
two-dimensional grammar.  The reason I thought of using Lojban,  
though, is that the changes to the grammar would be very minimal--  
Lojban's grammar is already multidimensional; a stream of text is a 1d  
stream that gets parsed & then folds like a protein into a many  
dimensional shape.

For instance, if you have the sentence written:

.i le gerku cu blabi  (The dog is white.)

You can insert the phrase "poi mi prami" (which I love) after "gerku",  
and assuming it's properly terminated (the "cu" suffices in this case)  
what you've done is unambiguously added a branch to the parse tree.   
If you're writing two dimensionally, you don't have to worry about  
shoehorning new branches into a line & unambiguously terminating  
them-- you can just run as many lines from the end of "gerku" as you  
need, to show various phrases that attach to it.

I've been working (intermittently) on a cursive script which is  
independent of direction (sideways, upsidedown, etc) with which to  
explore the possibility.  If anyone else is interested you're welcome  
to help.  I think it would be a neat way to write letters on paper.

mu'o mi'e. bret.