Subject: Re: [lojban] Programming Languages for Lojban

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 13:36:12 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Robert J. Chassell wrote:

> If one were to try to parse Lojban and use it for the internal workings of
> an inference engine, would Lisp or Prolog be more appropriate?
>
> Lisp is perceived as a more general purpose language than Prolog, so
> it more closely matches Lojban, which is a completely general purpose
> language.
>
> Also, people have written interpreters for many different programming
> languages in Lisp; I don't think as many have been written in Prolog.
> So someone who is willing to stand on the shoulders of others will
> have an easier time with Lisp.
>
> Am I right in thinking that you plan to write most of your inference
> engine in Lojban, and that you plan to use the Lisp or Prolog as just
> a boot strap mechanism?

I don't know a thing about parsers, LALR and yacc, AI and inference
engines, Lisp or Prolog. Hence, I am asking zero-level questions, like a
choice of language. But although there's been plenty of talk about
Lojban-comprehending software, none of the people with the appropriate
education have started any code so I'll have to do it. I need an inference
engine, and I think its internal language should be Lojban.

It seems elegant to do as much of the coding in Lojban itself, but I
really have no idea how realistic that is.

> I am looking forward to your write ups about turning Lojban into a
> humanly speakable programming language.

That's not me. I have almost no interest in speaking to computers. But I
would like to be able to type language and be "understood". And I would
like them to be able to communicate to each other about reality in Lojban
instead of, say, some XML dialect such as RDF or DAML+OIL.

> What is involved in making type checking optional? (The Lojban grammar
> makes it so, since you have a choice of including or not including a
> restrictive clause, i.e., one that tells you the type of the argument.)
> Under which circumstances will people prefer to use an imperative
> format, in which the computer is a robot that responds to orders, or
> prefer a format in which the computer answers questions?

Lojban seems like a strongly typed language; "cusku le gerku" is widely
understood to be meaningless. The back-introduction of (the computer
language concept of) strong typing into a human language is interesting,
and might provide benefits, although I have bristled at pedantry in the
past.

I would think a decent agent would understand both sentence formats. Some
sentences convey knowledge, while others issue orders.

-- 
When a system is in harmony with the Tao,
the compiler makes applications and utilities.
When a system goes counter to the Tao,
accounting logs fill the root directory.