[lojban-beginners] Typesetting

[paul_faehrbrorn <pa.fae@gmx.de>]

Hi,

shouldn't the following be possible?

- User types 'plain' Lojban text in some text editor
- Computer analyses text structure by running jbofi'e or so
- Computer creates *TeX file, using detected text structure
- Computer runs *TeX
- User rejoices over beautifully typeset Lojban text

I began musing about this after I discovered R L Powell's HTML version
of 'Alice' (http://lojban.org/~rlpowell/alis/alis.html). I find the
typographical conventions in that document very tasteful.

I then tried to automatically convert the HTML to LaTeX, which
spectacularly failed. For a brief moment I thought about doing a
screen dump and adding the LaTeX formatting commands by hand, but I
soon realised how idiotic it would be to put a quotation mark next to
*every* lu/li'u and nowhere else, to italicise *every* word following
a ba'e and nothing else, to start a new paragraph at *every* ni'o/no'i—
and nowhere else (and, of course, many things more). This seems in
principle so trivial a task that it should be done automatically.

I'm under the impression that a Lojban text wears its 'structure' on
its face. Lojban, as it were, kind of typesets itself, doesn't it?

(I'm obviously talking about 'functional typography' [I just made that
up], not things like font selection or fancily shaped paragraphs [of
which there happens to be one in 'Alice', btw.].)

Has by chance anyone set up something like that?

-pf

PS: Please note that I'm not saying that Lojban should be written
anything different from how it is written now.

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