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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 00:29:21 -0500

At 06:52 PM 03/18/2000 -0500, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> >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.

The language is in the public domain. We couldn't and wouldn't try to stop 
anyone.

But...

> 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.

The primary advantage in tying any language to the Star Trek universe would 
be to use the name in promoting it, in which case it at minimum divides the 
community between those willing to abide by whatever terms Paramount would 
require for using the name, and those who would refuse. Anything written 
in "Mark Okrand's Space Language" will likely not be read by anyone but the 
author. Similarly, if a mass market "Vulcan" caught on, those calling it 
"Loglan" or "Lojban" would be separated just as Klingonists who eschewed 
the name "Klingon" completely from their vocabulary would be cut off from 
the mainstream and the mass market, and would meet with blank looks when 
they talked to the public referring to "tHlingan Hol" or "Mark Okrand's 
Space Language".

All in all, while I'd be interested in Paramount's reaction to the idea, 
the perils of trademarks and other intellectual property law is something I 
think most Lojbanists would rather stay FAR away from, such that I would 
likely have to disapprove while wishing we could get the benefits without 
the penalties. But as I said, my disapproval would not necessarily stop 
anything.

> >> 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.

People have talked about a Lojban MUD as well. If you have the wherewithal 
to set it up, do so, and you can see who stops in. I at least have some 
idea how to use IRC.

On the other hand, I think that anyone interested in trying IRC should also 
at least consider the jbosnu list on onelist. It is as yet very low volume 
- much lower than an IRC chat would be, and it provides continuity over 
time and logging, and a lot slower speed than real time, for those just 
starting out.

> >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?)

yes to gismu, no to cmavo. Both gismu and cmavo are baselined. The draft 
dictionary is not officially baselined, but de facto the technical content 
(as opposed to editorial and possibly some explanations) are not likely to 
even have changes considered. It will however be expanded.

If you count cmavo compounds we do not even have a clean list of all that 
have seen use, much less with definitions. The dirty cmavo list, without 
glosses, is one of the files in the "working dictionary" directory that 
needs to be tackled. No one has yet come up with a good way to do English 
to Lojban in the cmavo list. The keywords are as often descriptive as 
definitional, and hence most would be utterly useless as English entries 
(except for those who remember the particular keyword but just can't quite 
recall which Lojban word corresponds to it - a problem only LogFlash users 
are likely to experience).

>even though it says it's from 93 in a lot of places.

The gismu list was baselined in 92, and the rafsi in 93. This language has 
been frozen for a long time in the core elements.

> 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.

Not all of us use Web browsers all the time. I hate the bloody things 
since they take so long to bring up, and often clog up the system. I tend 
to rely on "List", a vintage DOS program, which makes searching 
simple. Unix people seem to use "grep" correspondingly.

>2. A list to print out, Lojban -> English.

gismu.htm, cmavo.htm and rafsi.htm in the wordlists directory. There is no 
html-ized lujvo list, because all the Lojban-order lists are so 
drafty. The best Lojban-order lujvo list is the frequency word file in 
dictionary/working lujv1999.zip, with noralujv.txt in the next higher level 
dictionary directory is a close second. (the zip file has words that have 
not been defined but hopefully will be when people start volunteering, and 
it will be the main working file, whereas Nora's file was a snapshot taken 
when she last quit working and will not be maintained).

> 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.

It probably would be best if someone regenerated it from the raw 
file. There hasn't been a lot of changes, but I occasionally add a few 
entries when I have time to waste, and I think there was some changed 
explanation/wording of place structures a few years back.

>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.

It isn't html, but rather simply raw DOS text. CR LF marks a new line (or 
paragraph). I think if you just stuck <html><pre> in front you would get 
the paragraphing - the problem is that the lines can run at least 350 
characters long (and could be longer - that was what I spotted in a quick 
look).

> >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> :-)

Suggest alternatives. I am not an aesthete.

> >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.

There is a non-frame version. The main reason for the frame version was to 
give the speedy access to the roadmap, which is what most people want who 
know what they are looking for. The non-frame version is basically the 
right frame page, and is quite similar to the Helsinki page. (Indeed I 
based it on a draft revision that Veijo implemented but has never put in 
place.) But you can get from there to the roadmap in one click.

>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.

Yes. Feel free to edit the page the way you would like to see it, and if 
your changes seem to be an improvement I will consider using them (it 
would be helpful to know what you are changing, but technical cleanup of 
the computer generated stuff is fine by me).

I plan to take out the fonts. The font used is the one used in the printed 
book, which happens to be one of those rare sans serif fonts that clearly 
distinguishes capital I from lower case l even to us half-blind 
old-folks. I had originally thought people wanted an interesting font 
because of the positive feedback to the graphic text on the Helsinki 
page. I can use a font command a lot easier than I can generate a graphic.

>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.

I'll include anything from Helsinki that people find useful. Several 
different versions of the same file did not seem worth the space, and we 
are close to the 50 Meg limit now.

>That's about it, I think.
>
>-Robin, hoping he's managed to not be egregiously offensive.

Not hardly.

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 (newly updated!)