Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 18:50:36 -0400

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 09:45:19AM -0700, James F. Carter wrote:
> Lojban ought to include itself in the world cultural community, and adopt
> the ISO-8601 date order, ignoring baseline issues on the grounds that the
> original decision was a mistake brought about because nobody at that time
> had thought about the subsequently resolved functional issues.
> 
> A lot can happen in 16 years.

It's gone full circle - this is exactly the issue which was being argued when I
first joined the Lojban list.

I think the reasoning behind day-month-year is so that you can easily elide the
month and the year. However, since then, we've come to understand selma'o PA
better. If you say "the 16th", it's apparent that what is meant is 'the next
time the day is the 16th' but you're omitting a lot of information.

This could be accomplished in year-month-day with {no'o pi'e no'o pi'e 16}, or
just {pi'e pi'e 16}. And then the horrible kludge with names for years isn't
necessary. (renonopananc? Why don't we just call it Year of the Fruitbat and be
done with it?)

pi'e is supposed to be like a decimal point except in a mixed-base system.
It takes a very strange system to put larger place values *after* a decimal
point.

-- 
Rob Speer