Re: lojban newbie: an outsider looking in

["Michal Wallace (sabren)" <sabren@manifestation.com>]

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, xod wrote:

> We also have a lojban webring that I have been pressuring people to join!
> (Robin and John: add those HTML fragments to your pages!) I host its main
> page at http://www.decadezero.org/lojban_webring.html but my sites are
> suffering growing pains this week.

Yeah, I keep seeing the URL, but I haven't gotten it to load.

 
> In my opinion, most lujvo should be field-specific. So, a given lujvo might
> have one meaning with respect to automobiles, and another with respect to
> spaceflight. This is my own idea of the best solution to your above dilemma.
> 
> You see, a lujvo selects one of the many, many interpretations of a tanru.

Hmm... But from a computer perspective, that would make lojban harder
to use... :)

I wonder, though, how to avoid this.. I mean, I don't know every
word in the english language. How can you prevent two people from
coming up with the same lujvo for two slightly different tanru?


> I have initiated the formation of a computer-related glossary, but it's got
> a ways to go. Robin, Twery, Nicholas - your input here would be greatly
> appreciated. And yours too, Michal!

Out of curiosity, how are you tracking this? (Bob, too).. Perhaps
the dictionar(y|ies) could be database-driven and put on the web?

> I've seen parsers, but they all seem to barf incomprehensible diagrams
> instead of sentences, even crappy sentences like babelfish.

I think I might be able to manage a crappy sentence with a lot
of parentheses on my own.. And probably do a lot better after
studying YACC.


> I considered doing a Java servlet version of Logflash. I haven't seen the
> DOS version - the Mac version isn't all that bad. If you spearhead a
> project, I will certainly consider joining.

I'm interested. I run a self improvement website
(http://www.manifestation.com/) which I'm currently revamping into a
subscription service.. One of my plans has been a generic online
flashcard/learning system that allows for active learning like the
logFlash program, and "passive" learning inspired by various
superlearning techniques. You can see the current version at
http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/learnfast/ ...  I've been told
it doesn't work in netscape, so I've started reworking it in flash.


> You know, a CD rom sounds like a dandy idea.

Yeah.. I've got a little spanish CD rom.. there's almost no english
at all, except the manual. You just see little drawings and the text,
and can hear the actors.. It also has a feature that listens to you
and scores your pronunciation/accent... Except for the last bit,
simple stuff.. Yet it's really effective.

> Although, if we had a decent Lojban --> English parser, which output on the
> level of babelfish, I think that would be even dandier. However, I
> personally know almost nothing about all that parsing stuff.
> 
> I figure a nearly direct translation from the parser, with all the weird
> crap removed, and with maybe 20 - 50 rules for making the logician's
> English sound more like Standard English might be enough. This is what I
> REALLY want to see done!

part of the reason I suggested a perl version was because the dictionary
looks like: "x1 eats x2 ..." and it would be fairly easy, once you know
which sumti are x1 and x2, to do a search and replace (at least with
perl's regular expressions)..


> http://extropy.com/

completely offtopic: I saw the foresight exchange a few months ago,
and thought it was a really cool idea.. :)

Cheers,

- Michal
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