Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [Announcement] The Alice Translation Has Moved And Changed

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 13:42:08 -0400

At 04:00 PM 10/9/02 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>la djorden cusku di'e
> >While I don't advocate CVS-wars, I've got to say that this is an
> >situation where it *is* simply correcting an error. "re ji'i ci"
> >means twenty-three, where the digit "3" has been rounded. This is
> >part of the language definition. It's not like we are talking about
> >something which is legitimate to dispute: CLL *clearly* says what
> >PA+ ji'i PA+ means in chapter 18.
>
>You know that that is not the only position within the community.
>I will post something about the semantic issue on jboske for
>those interested. As for the policy on what errors should be
>corrected (and who decides what constitutes an error), I think
>the host of the page will have to decide, and the rest of us
>can act accordingly.

I think that the concept of a CVS or wiki is that the host is just a host 
and not an editor, and that people are supposed to be cooperative.

As for the question of errors, if it violates the baseline, then by 
definition it IS an error, assuming that the baseline has any meaning 
whatsoever.

In this case, regarding the semantic issue, it appears (pending your jboske 
post) that CLL clearly defines PA ji'i PA to mean something other than how 
you used it, and therefore a naive reader will read the text to be 
"approximately 23". Furthermore, And seems to think (and I haven't 
checked) that CLL clearly says how to write "approximately 2 or 3". So I 
cannot see why there is any issue as to what the word ji'i means.

Now if you think the definition of ji'i is broken, I would expect you to 
make a stand on some usage where indeed there is no other formula which 
gives what you want.

> >That said; you could always just fork Alice and have the "xorxes
> >version" of the translation. There's nothing wrong with that course
> >of action, in my opinion, and since you translated so much of it
> >it is certainly justifiable.
>
>Right. I'd prefer for there to remain a single version, but if
>I am not the final editor then I prefer to have a separate version
>somewhere else.

So it sounds like you are explicitly advocating public dialectization of 
the language even on issues where there is a clear baseline position if you 
think that position to be wrong, which sounds like out-and-out rejection 
that the baseline has any meaning?

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org