[lojban-beginners] Re: vlatai and logflash

["A. PIEKARSKI" <totus@rogers.com>]

I appreciate your detailed response, Colin.  Please see below.
> 
> 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/

The reference is in the third bullet point under the 'Parsers' sub-heading.

> 
> 
> > 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.
> 

My intention wasn't to criticize the authors..  It was:
(1)  to make beginner pages more helpful to beginners, perticularly those  who 
are not geeky or technical (that's me: I thought Python is a snake).  That 
doesn't require a new wiki - just some rewording, and some extra explanatory phrases.
(2) to get to use vlatai and check out some of my jbovlaste entries.  

So my question is:
what specifically do I (as a Windows user) need to get in order to unpack the package 
and use vlatai?

totus