Subject: Re: [lojban] More on lojban programatic semantics: Strong typing and inferencing of types

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 06:34:12 PDT

la brukcr cusku di'e

>On the other hand, "poi" implies that the characteristic named is an
>*essential* aspect of the thing named - this is much closer to the
>meaning of a type in a PL.

I suggested {noi} because you called it an annotation,
which I took to be some additional information about
something already known. If you meant it to be a definition,
then {poi} is better.

>Ehm, I think a namcu is a valid mekso, but I wasn't (yet) talking about
>type hierarchy - just giving multiple examples. These bridi were meant
>to be examples of declarations.

Ok. I don't really know what a mekso is. Is {li pa cu mekso}
a sensible statement?

>My understanding was that naclu (and the other similar gismu) followed a
>sumti pattern of "x1 is <some kind of number> of value x2". So naclu
>means that x1 is a rational, whose value is given by x2. So in the
>example above, I would be saying that "la stokuot." is an *unspecified*
>rational number. X2 is the value. So you could "initialize" a variable
>at the same time by including x2.

Interesting, but I'm not sure what goes in your x1.
Not a value, but the name of a value?

>A numerical value in x2 is adimensional, but the things in x1 *are*
>dimensioned, because the gismu asserts that this is so.

Of course. But the things in x1 are not numbers. They are things
like people, cars, tables, rocks, etc.

>Further
>,something in x2 could be dimensioned if it was identified earlier as
>being in a dimension.

I don't understand what you mean. The number 2 is always
adimensional, even when there are two meter things and
two gram things.

>In this case, either the dimensions have to agree,
>or there has to be a reasonable conversion. So:
>
>la numbr. namcu li pe --- "Number" is a number, whose value is 1

This is not how {namcu} is defined. {namcu} has only one place.
Maybe you mean {klani}?

>la distens. minli la numbr. -- "Distance" is in miles, the value 1

This would be inconsistent. Do you say {dy minli lo namcu}
or {dy minli lo se namcu}, using your {namcu}? Or both are right?

>la triplen. mitre la distens. -- Either an error (la distens. is miles,
>la triplen. is meters) or conversion of values automatically takes place.

It is not clear to me what it is that you are naming
{la distens}. Is it a number? If not, it can't be a se mitre.
If it is a number, it can't be a minli, because numbers
don't have length.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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