From mark@kli.org Tue Oct 02 04:18:55 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: mark@kli.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_4_1); 2 Oct 2001 11:17:06 -0000 Received: (qmail 90720 invoked by uid 0); 2 Oct 2001 11:12:28 -0000 Received: (qmail 34277 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2001 17:14:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by 10.1.1.224 with QMQP; 1 Oct 2001 17:14:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n11.groups.yahoo.com) (10.1.10.50) by mta1 with SMTP; 1 Oct 2001 17:16:02 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: mark@kli.org Received: from [10.1.10.119] by n11.onelist.org with NNFMP; 01 Oct 2001 17:16:01 -0000 Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 17:15:57 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: bases [was: Re: [lojban] Re:HEX advert... (Don't know what it was) Message-ID: <9pa8cd+ekqt@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 1665 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 162.33.229.2 From: mark@kli.org --- In lojban@y..., "michael helsem" wrote: > >From: mark@k... > li'o > >Now, does this really matter all that much in Lojban? After all, we > >have ra'e for repeating digits, and we even have fi'u for explicit > >fractions > > it seems to me not at all un-lobykai, that although there is a default > base of ten, other bases are simple to implement & indeed already being > used by some of us. base-pluralism like many another pluralism is only > unthinkable to the unsophisticated mind. To be sure, base pluralism is definitely lobykai; indeed, that's why God created {dau-vai} and {ju'u} in the first place. Truth be told, it's sort of a shame that there's no really easy way to go beyond base-16 for situations that so demand (I take it back. That's a wonderful place for nonce use of experimental cmavo. Defined and used within the document in question, with no precedent or binding statement made about anything else. I play with all kinds of weird bases from time to time... there are versions of the computer language INTERCAL that work in bases 3-7, and I'd toyed with Fibonacci base and Factorial "base" here and there too). The discussion here seemed to be on what the default should be, and it's fairly clear that the unmarked Lojban default always was, is canonically, and probably should remain, decimal. That there shouldn't be ways to talk about other bases (like ju'u) or even "fix" a base as temporary default (in the Dozenal Society's journal, for example (would likely be implicit there), or in a computer science textbook) is not at issue: those things should definitely be possible. ~mark