Subject: RE: [lojban] Aesthetics

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 20:20:40 -0000

Nick:
> Speaking completely irresponsibly for a change:
> 
> And's argument that not conforming to Latin alphabet conventions when 
> writing in the latin alphabet is not utterly bogus 
> 
> But reading Lojban is hard enough work already without introducing 
> *some* signposts. 
> ..imU'ileda'inunago'ikeinodafAntelenurojbOprecucIskataitu'adei
> 
> I have favoured using braces to help out in complex structures. Yes, we 
> already have phonetic punctuation. But like I say, it's hard enough 
> already. This got vetoed when I did it in the introductory prose to the 
> two books, though. Which I accept, since they are exemplars of Standard 
> Lojban, and the optional punctuations have never been considered 
> Standard 

I have in the past been quite shocked at your use of punctuation, e.g.
guillemets, because it looks like a violation of audiovisual isomorphism.
The Lojban philosophy was that all punctuation should be speakable,
so if we write unspeakable punctuation, we aren't testing that design
feature properly.

> When I write lojban, I use lots of linebreaks and lots of indentation. 
> For the same reason 

I think that too much of a concession to all but the beginner. A
language should not be so difficult that it requires such drastic
measures to make it intelligible.

My own preference is to omit as much as possible, including all
fullstops and most apostrophes, and to separate sentences with a 
bit of extra white space. I am quite content to consider baseline-
conformant any orthography that conforms to basic AV isomorphism.
Requirement of conformity to a more narrow prescription seems
merely conformity for conformity's sake. Like xorxes, I don't
really notice orthographic variants -- certainly not as any kind
of impediment. (But perhaps this is because reading Lojban in
any orthography is so difficult for me.)

--And.