On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:29 AM, Kevin Reid
<kpreid@mac.com> wrote:
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.
I have no problem with this.
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.
As long as they are used appropriately (i.e., as proscribed in the CLL), I am uneasy but forgiving about this.
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 am deeply, deeply, deeply against this.
(Adding this one in myself:)
4. The inclusion of {denpa bu} where it is currently left out.
I am very much for this. In fact, I am as much for this as I am against (3.).
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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