Re: [lojban] Re: la .alis.

[Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>]

Mr. Everson,

I would welcome publishing Alice in Wonderland in Lojban. As you point
out, that already exists. If you want to publish it the way you
describe, that's fine-- so long as you don't call it Lojban, because
it isn't.

If you capitalize proper names and the start of sentences, it's not
Lojban. Maybe it's better! But it's not what Lojban is. Lojban is
handed down ex-cathedra with no regard for usage. As a graphic
designer with twelve years experience in the publishing industry, I
have always found the traditional Latin capitalization structure to be
more readable. But that is the first time anyone here has ever heard
me say that. It is also probably the last. Because I don't care. All
it would mean is that your non-Lojban would be more legible than
Lojban. If so, that is a far larger issue than the small question of
you publishing a book. And that larger issue is permanently settled,
beyond even my reach. Do not confuse the two issues.

Thanks for your inquiry, and thanks for taking our response so well.

Sincerely,
Matt Arnold
President, Board of Directors, Logical Language Group


On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Evertype <michael.everson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Robin said:
>
> He "offered" to publish it for us.
>
> I suggested that I might publish it, yes.
>
> He then insisted on changing the layout and punctuation to match
> English, and refused to publish it any other way.
>
> Layout? The layout is in paragraphs, which match one-to-one with
> Carroll's paragraphs. In terms of fonts, yes, I would use Liberty and
> De Vinne and Mona Lisa Recut and the Engraver's fonts.
>
> English? No, the suggestion was not to "match English", but to take
> advantage of some conventions which have been common to all Latin-
> script languages for centuries.
>
> Refused? You've already got a 69-page monofont text (looks like TeX to
> me) PDF available, and electronic formats which your computers can
> parse. What value would there be in me putting out a similar edition
> -- especially in the context of a range of translations of Alice?
>
> Currently published are Cornish, English, Esperanto, German, and
> Irish.
>
> In the works are French, Italian, Manx, Scots, Shaw Alphabet, Swedish,
> Ulster Scots, and Welsh.
>
> Possibilities are at least Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Lojban, and
> Scottish Gaelic.
>
> That is, he wanted it to look like this:
>
> Mi klama la Bast,n. I la Bab cusku "lu mi klama li'u"
>
> Not quite. But I'd be very interested to talk with people about the
> various options one might have for punctuation markup.
>
> Caps at start of sentences, quote marks, a few other things I can't
> remember.
>
> Caps for proper names (la Alis), and anomalous stress marked by acute
> accents rather than by capitalization (which is thereby freed for
> other use). Near as I can tell the only word in the text affected by
> this is "la meri,An" ("la Meri,Án" or "la Meri,án"; the original is
> "Mary Ann").
>
> We (people on IRC at the time), umm, kinda told him where to stick
> that idea. In pretty clear terms.
>
> My memory of the IRC was not so black and white. You, and some others,
> expressed a lack of interest in an edition with "Victorian"
> typography, and criticized the notion of doing so. But everyone did
> not share that view. Pages like http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban+typography
> and http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Punctuation suggest that there is no
> blanket ban on punctuation, for instance.
>
> I don't think he likes us anymore.
>
> I like you fine. I just disagree with your stance on punctuation and
> typographic conventions.
>
> I also like Lewis Carroll, and good typography. I find long paragraphs
> with no clear visual indication of sentence boundaries to be
> bewildering. I am sure that computers and savants find it quite simple
> to parse. I as a multilingual trained linguist expert in writing
> systems, I still find it much easier to navigate the language when
> standard Latin-script conventions are used.
>
> My English and Cornish editions are used in Cornwall by learners who
> find it helpful to compare the two texts. Thing which helps learners
> to navigate a paragraph are sentence boundaries, capitalized proper
> names, question marks, and so on.
>
> Indeed, in http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter3.html,
> we find the following.
>
> "Technically, the period is an optional reminder to the reader of a
> mandatory pause that is dictated by the rules of the language; because
> these rules are unambiguous, a missing period can be inferred from
> otherwise correct text. Periods are included only as an aid to the
> reader."
>
> In for a penny, in for a pound. Full stops are not necessary; they are
> redundant. So too are quotation marks, and since anomalous stress can
> be more congenially marked with the acute accent (as in Spanish) than
> by SHOUTING, there's no reason an edition of a text could not choose
> to do that, and thereby permit capital letters to be used,
> redundantly, to mark the beginnings of sentences, proper names, and
> whatnot.
>
> You, Robin, and maybe even many Lojbanists, might believe that such
> redundancy is irrelevant, un-useful, wrong-headed, ugly, stupid, or
> just plain "wrong". I rather doubt that all 464 members of this
> discussion forum will hold such extreme views, though. Redundancy is
> harmless -- indeed, we don't speak with punctuation marks in English
> or Irish or any other languages. Lojban's "audio-visual isomorphism"
> is extremely cool. But centuries of Latin typographic practice have
> evolved because those practices are *useful* to readers (as useful as
> the full stop) and I can see no reason not to pursue my project just
> because you and a few others on IRC, "umm, kinda told me where to
> stick" the idea.
>
> I would appreciate it if anyone who *is* interested in this would say
> so, as I'd like to discuss the options regarding redundant markup of
> quoted material.
>
> Best regards,
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
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