Subject: [lojban] Re: open and save

From: Steven Belknap <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 12:58:52 -0600

On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 12:05 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 11:57:21AM -0600, Steven Belknap wrote:
>> The use of the lojban word <dacru> for a computer file is not
>> malglico. The analogy of computer file to a paper file is a
>> language-independent extension of the concept of file to cyberspace.
>
> That is *such* incredible crap. There are hundreds of languages that
> don't even have the *concept* of a file folder.

Perhaps Maori does not have the concept of a file folder. Anybody who 
lives in a modern industrial state must deal with files.

>
> And dacru isn't a file in that sense anyways, it's a drawer. A
> *physical* drawer. A *sliding* *compartment*, for crying out loud.

On my Mac there is a *sliding drawer* which I click on to see my files 
of email messages. Not all physical file holders are sliding 
compartments. My reading of the definition is that the brackets around 
"sliding compartment" denote a typical instance of a <dacru>, but do 
not necessarily restrict the meaning of the word to physical drawers 
with sliding compartments.

dacru dac drawer x1 is a drawer/file in structure x2, a [sliding 
compartment] container for contents x3

There are clear cyber analogues to each of the broda in <dacru>

>
>> <vreji> is not an apt lojban word for file. A file *contains* records.
>
> Umm, BS. Unless you're defining record as an ASCII character or
> something, I assure you, the vast majority of my files do not, in fact,
> contain records. They are records (i.e. permanent-ish storage) of 
> data.

"record" and "file" are useful English terms precisely because they 
distinguish two levels of abstraction about the organization of 
information. Do you have any Microsoft Word files on your computer? If 
so, some of your files contain records. Your approach would conflate 
these two levels of abstraction, to the detriment of clear expression 
of an idea.

The definitions in the gismu files are necessarily terse due to space 
limitations. We ought to be careful not to be proscriptive.

-Steven