Re: Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Simp.Chinese required

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

   Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 01:19:54 +0200
   From: Robin Turner <lojban-out@lojban.org>
Subject: Re: Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Simp.Chinese required

> Nick Nicholas wrote:
> > Lojbanists, I take a break from your scheduled argling to notify you
> > that the new version of the Level 0 package is up, incorporating Robin
> > Powell's comments; it also incoporates a pronunciation key in the six
> > base languages of Lojban.
>
> Very nice!
>
> The only thing I'd take issue with (which I think I've mentioned 
> before)
> is the idea that Lojban is more verbose than English because of the 
> lack
> of unmarked metaphor / idiom.  I think this is compensated for by
> attitudinals and the fact that a lot of grammatical features are
> optional (tense, aspect etc.).

I've introduced a hedge (documented on the wiki) which should deal with 
this.

> It would also be nice if we could find a more aesthetically pleasing
> font for Lojban text, but PDF is tricky that way - I've produced
> unreadable (under Windows) PDF documents by trying to use my favourite 
> font.

I'll put up a sampler of monospace and monospacish fonts for people to 
express opinions from. I'm having to generate the pdf via Windows now 
rather than Mac, and for now am sticking to what comes with Win2000 or 
is freeware. Lojban is currently Andale Mono; I wouldn't mind going to 
Trebuchet. Courier is not an option.

There's added complications that printers typically want postscript 
rather than truetype fonts, and there aren't many postscript fonts 
around any more. But we'll deal with that later.

--
 Dr Nick Nicholas, French/Italian. University of Melbourne, Australia
        http://www.opoudjis.net        nickn@unimelb.edu.au
 "All the nations also under his dominion were filled with joy and
 inexpressible gladness at not being even for a moment deprived of the
 benefits of a well ordered government."
    --- Eusebius of Caesaria on the accession of Constantine I.