[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[lojban] Re: open and save
On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 12:05 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 11:57:21AM -0600, Steven Belknap wrote:
The use of the lojban word <dacru> for a computer file is not
malglico. The analogy of computer file to a paper file is a
language-independent extension of the concept of file to cyberspace.
That is *such* incredible crap. There are hundreds of languages that
don't even have the *concept* of a file folder.
Perhaps Maori does not have the concept of a file folder. Anybody who
lives in a modern industrial state must deal with files.
And dacru isn't a file in that sense anyways, it's a drawer. A
*physical* drawer. A *sliding* *compartment*, for crying out loud.
On my Mac there is a *sliding drawer* which I click on to see my files
of email messages. Not all physical file holders are sliding
compartments. My reading of the definition is that the brackets around
"sliding compartment" denote a typical instance of a <dacru>, but do
not necessarily restrict the meaning of the word to physical drawers
with sliding compartments.
dacru dac drawer x1 is a drawer/file in structure x2, a [sliding
compartment] container for contents x3
There are clear cyber analogues to each of the broda in <dacru>
<vreji> is not an apt lojban word for file. A file *contains* records.
Umm, BS. Unless you're defining record as an ASCII character or
something, I assure you, the vast majority of my files do not, in fact,
contain records. They are records (i.e. permanent-ish storage) of
data.
"record" and "file" are useful English terms precisely because they
distinguish two levels of abstraction about the organization of
information. Do you have any Microsoft Word files on your computer? If
so, some of your files contain records. Your approach would conflate
these two levels of abstraction, to the detriment of clear expression
of an idea.
The definitions in the gismu files are necessarily terse due to space
limitations. We ought to be careful not to be proscriptive.
-Steven