bases [was: Re: [lojban] Re:HEX advert... (Don't know what it was)

[mark@kli.org]

--- In lojban@y..., "michael helsem" <graywyvern@h...> wrote:
> >From: mark@k...
> li'o
> >Now, does this really matter all that much in Lojban? After all, 
we
> >have ra'e for repeating digits, and we even have fi'u for explicit
> >fractions
> 
> it seems to me not at all un-lobykai, that although there is a 
default
> base of ten, other bases are simple to implement & indeed already 
being
> used by some of us. base-pluralism like many another pluralism is 
only
> unthinkable to the unsophisticated mind.

To be sure, base pluralism is definitely lobykai; indeed, that's why 
God created {dau-vai} and {ju'u} in the first place. Truth be told, 
it's sort of a shame that there's no really easy way to go beyond 
base-16 for situations that so demand (I take it back. That's a 
wonderful place for nonce use of experimental cmavo. Defined and 
used within the document in question, with no precedent or binding 
statement made about anything else. I play with all kinds of weird 
bases from time to time... there are versions of the computer 
language INTERCAL that work in bases 3-7, and I'd toyed with 
Fibonacci base and Factorial "base" here and there too). The 
discussion here seemed to be on what the default should be, and it's 
fairly clear that the unmarked Lojban default always was, is 
canonically, and probably should remain, decimal. That there 
shouldn't be ways to talk about other bases (like ju'u) or even 
"fix" a base as temporary default (in the Dozenal Society's journal, 
for example (would likely be implicit there), or in a computer 
science textbook) is not at issue: those things should definitely be 
possible.

~mark