Beginner's take on the open/closed gismu debate (was: Re: emotions)

[tk1@despammed.com]

Hello all,

With regard to the current debate on whether gismu should be open or closed,
I am not very sure what my position is, but I think a more pernicious
problem is the tendency for some users to introduce nonce lujvo (e.g. in
Chapter 2 of "Alice in Wonderland", I see the word "camri'ojvebla" (?!?)).

Perhaps it would be a good idea to require all new lujvo to be defined in
terms of existing Lojban terms _using_ _Lojban's_ _predicate_ _logic_
_facilities_ -- among other things, this should improve the `portability' of
the Lojban language definition to other extant languages. The same strategy
may also be applicable to certain gismu, to ameliorate the bloated gismu
problem. For instance, something like this may work:

	forall x (nanmu(x) <=> (nakni(x) /\ remna(x)))

With regard to the tension between the machine parser and the EBNF
specification: I downloaded John Cowan's latest official parser (version
3.0.00), and while I was able to read the EBNF, the machine parser refused
to compile on my system. Though I can try to hack it until it compiles, that
will mean I am an arrogant fool trying to change the Lojban language
definition, so I am not sure what is the best thing to do here.

Thanks,
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