Subject: Re: [lojban] A wide variety of comments...

From: Robin Lee Powell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 18:52:03 -0500

>From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
>
>At 03:24 AM 03/18/2000 -0500, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>>Hello, all. I have little to say on lojban itself, as I haven't really
>>managed to learn it (or even tried that hard, of which more anon). I
>>do, however, have some thoughts on various things surrounding the
>>language.
>>
>>1. I'll start with the one that is most likely to piss people off. :-)
>>For the purposes of meme propogation, what do people think of the idea
>>of going through the (apparently fairly easy[1]) process of getting a
>>Paramount license and making a 'Vulcan dictionary' that is actually
>>lojban?
>
>I doubt that it would be easy to get a license. The original stuff was 
>done under contract and the KLI had to work for a while to get things set 
>up to allow much of anyone other than Mark O. to publish about 
>Klingon. But Mark Shoulson can probably comment on this better than anyone 
>since he is a published Klingonist. Mark?

<nod> I was more interested, at this stage, in finding out whether
people found this to be an acceptable venue for meme propagation. Note
that there's no reason that the language has no be called anything other
than lojban: Vulcan is clearly an English speaker's name for the
planet/people/language, there's no reason the language of that people
would have that word in in, or even those sound. Qo'noS
notwithstanding.

>In any event, if there was such a license, it would have to be such that it 
>would not constrain use of Lojban in any way when not labelled as "Vulcan", 
>and I doubt that Paramount would buy that idea.

<blink> I'm not aware of any such restrictions on Klingon. There's
nothing stopping me, for example, from putting up a translation of the
Anulindale in 'Marc Okrand's Space Language' on my web page, although
calling it 'Klingon' per se might be a problem. I've seen no sign that
even 'tHlingan Hol' (sp?) is trademarked.

>>2. I have no interest in learning a language from dictionaries, lesson
>>books, and the like. None. Zilch. Nada. I want to learn it by using
>>it in conversation, dammit!
>>
>> To that end, I would like to see lojbanists using some kind of
>>real-time conversation to teach each other the language in actual
>>conversation. I would be happy to point people to space on the mud I
>>run specifically for this. Ecstatic, actually. IRC is another option.
>
>We've had IRC conversations regularly at LogFest time, and someone once had 
>an IRCbot that would support such conversation with word lookups. Go for it.

<nod> I'm really not a big IRC fan, but since there's already a channel
up and in use (#lojban on EFNet), I'll just go there. If the bot
doesn't know how to do word lookup, I'll see what I can do.

>>The main thing is that I think that most of us would
>>learn the language _much_ faster if we had a reason and a venue to use
>>it conversationally. Not only that, but such a venue would provide
>>instant ideas and criticism on translations.
>
>I of course welcome this. If people keep logs (and send them in for 
>archival), all the better.

<NOD> Major coolness.

>>3. It would probably take me about a minute to sort the list at
>>http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/gismutot.html in english-equivalent
>>word order. Will the people at that site take something like that?
>
>We published gismu lists in English order, but once the draft dictionary 
>file was complete, it more than supplanted such list. 

<confession>
I haven't taken a good look at the draft dictionary yet.
</confession>

<looks>

Alright, lemme be more concrete. I'm going to assume for the time being
that everything in draft-dictionary is more-or-less up to date (i.e.
that it has all the known gismu and cmavo; were those baselined?), even
though it says it's from 93 in a lot of places. I have three wants:

1. A list to search while online. The helsinki lists win hands down
for this for me. They are _SO_ much nicer to look at from a web
broswer than anything I've managed to find on lojban.org. Those
definition tags make a big difference.

2. A list to print out, Lojban -> English. The stuff in the
draft-dictionary files seems fine for this. I like LaTeX, so I'm
prepared to recompile them or print out the ps or whatever. The main
point being that dict.ps (in Temporary) is well organized and readable
visually, at least to me.

3. A list to print out, English -> Lojban. I see nothing that fills
this need. engdict.gis is, to me, utterly unreadable. I'm aware that
my visual paragraph-finding algorithm doesn't work the way a lot of
other people's does, but I assure you that document defeats it.

>The gismu English keywords are simply too sparse and ill-connected in
>meaning to the Lojban gismu to use them as the basis for translation,
>when there is a better (albeit much longer) alternative.
>
>If there is demand, we can put one up.

<nod>

I would care less if I could get the palm gismu searcher working. Does
anyone know if the author is still around? I've never gotten any e-mail
response from him, and if that state continues I'll probably just start
hacking the code myself. Been meaning to learn palm programming
anyways.

>>5. I find http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/ to be a much easier to
>>use/nicer to look at (in both Netscape and lynx) site than
>>http://www.lojban.org/ (no offense intended, lojbab). Is it just me?
>
>We'll see what others say. The reason for redoing www.lojban.org was that 
>1) people reported that the Helsinki site was hard to use and find things 
>on, 

<boggle> Like _what_? I have never had anything that I would even
describe as slight difficulty navigating that sight. I find the
organization of information excellent, in particular the way the word
lists are broken down.

>and 2) Veijo has not had time to update it often, and due to security 
>concerns only he can do the work.

That's rather more of a problem, yes.

>If you like that site better, tell us why, and if others agree, we can 
>include some of the features. So far, other than some criticism of colors 

<BIG NOD> :-)

>and a request that I break up the roadmap file so that it is faster-loading 
>from the main page, I have seen little in suggestions for improvement (I 
>will now expect to be inundated %^).

1. I hate frames. They're evil.
2. There's an extra <li> tag after the links page.
3. <font> tags are also evil.
4. The html uses tables for visual markup and seems like it's probably
computer generated.
5. The wordlists on helsinki _rock_, as I've said.
6. I like the 'la lojban.' picture at the top of helsinki.
7. The lojban.org site seems to basically be a minimal bit of html
stuck on top of the file server, whereas the helsinki site has a fair
bit of stuff that's not in the file server.

That's about it, I think.

-Robin, hoping he's managed to not be egregiously offensive.

-- 
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest.
As a member of the Hans Solo School of Action Before Thought, Welcome,
You've Got Male.