[lojban-beginners] Re: vlatai and logflash

[Oren <get.oren@gmail.com>]

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
<colin.wright@denbridgemarine.com> 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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