[lojban] My opinion on Lojban typography variants, and the la .alis. sample page

[Kevin Reid <kpreid@mac.com>]

On Mar 30, 2010, at 9:35, Michael Everson wrote:

> On 30 Mar 2010, at 11:32, Remo Dentato wrote:
>
> > I think that an example of a page with lojban text composed  
> > according your proposal would be very beneficial for the discussion.
>
> OK. I mocked this up quite quickly. First, look again at the Yiddish  
> example:
>
> http://www.evertype.com/books/alice-yi-p.1.png
>
> Then, have a look at the Lojban:
>
> http://www.evertype.com/books/alice-jbo-p.1.png

Before anything else, I would like to say that I admire your patience  
and your goal to balance typographical aesthetics and the wishes of  
the Lojban community.


Suggestions:

I notice that your “normal” (left side) Lojban text lacks any “.”  
whatsoever. One of your objections seems to be the absence of non- 
letter-based cues to beginnings and ends of sentences; how about  
inserting the “.” before “i”?

One could debate whether doing just this is worse than fully-dotted or  
fully-undotted Lojban text, and whether it would mislead beginners  
into thinking that “.” has something to do with sentence separation,  
but it at least has the advantage of being “not wrong” and increasing  
the visibility of sentence separators. I, for one, am used to reading  
“.i” as being the sentence separator. In fact, considering that a real  
speaker will pause between sentences, arguably even “... cu tcidu. i  
ku'i cy ...” is not wrong as a representation.

I think it should be at least tried to have the Lojban text fully  
dotted (“.i”, “cy.”, “.alis.”, etc.); even if they do not fall on  
sentence separations, they add visual structure and might reduce the  
“wall of text” appearance of your left-side page.

I note that you have placed capitalization-and-period for each plain  
“i”, and the “i ku'i”, but not the logically-connected “i ca bo” (line  
4 of paragraph 2) or “i je nai ji'a” (line 1 of paragraph 3). I find  
this to be inconsistent; if you're going to be strict about Latin  
conventions between unconnected sentences, you should use semicolons  
between these connected sentences.


My opinion on the matter in general:

I see three major categories of possible differences:

  1. Those which represent Lojban structure differently. For example,
     writing áéíóú instead of AEIOU for syllable stress.

  2. Those which add redundant cues to the existing sentence structure.
     For example, adding quotation marks and question marks, or
     italicizing {ba'e}-marked words.

  3. Those which add information. For example, capitalizing some
     sumti-selbri but not others, such as you have done with “lo Blabi
     Ractu” vs. “le glare djedi”, or adding italics where there were no
     emphasis markers in the text, such as in “le Ractu ca'a lebna lo
     junla le kosta daski”.

I do not mind the first (especially when they have aesthetic value  
such as, in my opinion, the use of accents instead of uppercase), am  
ambivalent about the second (especially as they are somewhat analogous  
to a speaker's use of tone), and object to the third (because I feel  
it will confuse the reader as to the actual structure and significant  
aspects of Lojban text).

--
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>




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