From rob@twcny.rr.com Wed Nov 14 00:03:04 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 14 Nov 2001 08:03:04 -0000 Received: (qmail 85166 invoked from network); 14 Nov 2001 08:03:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 14 Nov 2001 08:03:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout5.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.169) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 14 Nov 2001 08:03:03 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-0 [24.92.226.74]) by mailout5.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.6/Road Runner 1.12) with ESMTP id fAE832h13196 for ; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 03:03:02 -0500 (EST) Received: from riff ([24.92.246.4]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 03:03:00 -0500 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.32 #1 (Debian)) id 163uzq-0000aZ-00 for ; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 03:02:10 -0500 Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 03:02:10 -0500 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Lojban projects update Message-ID: <20011114030210.B2158@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer X-Yahoo-Profile: squeekybobo Just an update on what I've been doing with Lojban recently: I've given up on the GNOME translation, based on my experience when I actually attempted to use it. GNOME doesn't even use the same system as other programs to figure out what language it's supposed to be in, it seems - I couldn't even get it to use Spanish consistently. Some ugly hacks made some things show up in Lojban, but I wouldn't honestly expect anyone else to take the steps required. Additionally, I discovered that GNOME was generally the wrong place to start, because of how nebulous it is. I wanted to create a Lojban computing environment, but there are so many things which would better be translated first. So I decided to go about this the right way. I registered art-lojban as a team in the GNU translation project (I had a heck of a time explaining to the guy that our three-letter code really is ten letters long), and myself as the only member. If we start using this, the translation project team would give us a way to check in Lojban translations of common UNIX programs, and have these translations automatically released in the package. It might even cause someone poking around to see what files a package installed to wonder "Hmm, what's this art-lojban thing?" So if anyone's interested (I notice there were a couple of people making half-hearted contributions to the GNOME file), just let me know and I'll add you to the team. If we get three people involved we get a team mailing list (hoo boy, another Lojban-related mailing list). The right place to start would most likely be the locale file, which tells the computer (for example) how to sort text in alphabetical order in Lojban (not hard), how money, times, and dates are expressed (please please let it be big-endian), the names of days and months... uh, what the Lojban standard paper size is... from there, we could go on to translate some programs. For comparison, Esperanto has translated the Debian menu system, grep, mutt, texinfo, and xmms. Once again, if you're interested, let me know. And then the other thing: Deciding I need to actually write stuff in Lojban, I decided to embark on a translation of Flatland, by Edwin Abbott. This has the advantages that it's copyright-free, it's relatively short, and it deals with concepts which generally are natural to Lojban. (And maybe this will help establish things like {fa'abe'a} as being "northward", when it becomes apparent how awkward things would be in the story without such words.) I've translated the first few chapters already just so I knew I really could do it before announcing it to the list. I've been doing it in a mock-TexInfo format so far - I take the plain text file and put @c before all the English lines. I should probably fix that sometime. Where should I put the file to make it public? Should I add it to CVS? -- la rab.spir noi ba ai pilno zo gumri