Why capital letters standing in for letterals is a *bad* idea.

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

Some people use capital letters in Lojban to represent letterals,
similar to English acronyms.

I just realized what the problem is with this: it introduces ambiguity,
because capital letters can be used in names.

Is

    XAX xamgu

the same as

    xy abu xy xamgu

or the (valid, but strange) name and brivla

    xax xamgu

?

Every parser agrees that both are valid, and if capital letters can be
used as letterals, there's no way to tell the difference.

-Robin

-- 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/  ***  I'm a *male* Robin.
"Many philosophical problems are caused by such things as the simple
inability to shut up." -- David Stove, liberally paraphrased.
http://www.lojban.org/  ***  loi pimlu na srana .i ti rokci morsi