Subject: Re: [lojban] Marketing lojban

From: Robin Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 20:33:11 +0200

> >Second (and last, I'm almost done. :) is that at one point I started
> >reformatting the draft textbook in LaTeX so I could print it out and have
> >something pleasent to look at it. Its a metric buttload of work, so I
> >stopped because it wasn't worth my time for just myself.

Assuming you're using a UNIX-type OS, download the latest version of wv, 
which converts MS Word documents to reasonable LaTeX (and can be used as a 
LyX plugin).

>
> Those of us in the Windoze world don't know what to do with TeX and its
> relatives. The master of the draft textbook is in Microsoft Word, which is
> on the website.

And those of us outside the Windoze world don't like Word documents, even if 
we have something that can read them ;-) I suggest we adopt PDF for long 
documents on the site, and stick to HTML for shorter stuff. PDF is not ideal 
by any means, but at least it's cross-platform.
>
> >(I was also correcting errors and bringing it up to date) Would it be
> >worthwhile to
> >finish, or is it too out of date?
>
> What do you mean by "out of date"? There is no newer version, nor is
> anyone working on one.
>
> If you complete such a thing, we could add it to the Web site. Whether
> anyone wants such a thing, I can't say. The textbook has minor errors, but
> its primary flaws are incompleteness and an aborted concept of Lojban
> pedagogy. The incompleteness is partly in lack of coverage of the whole
> language, but much more severe in its lack of copious examples, exercises
> and practice readings and writings of the sort that language education
> requires. I learned what I was doing wrong in the textbook when I started
> self-teaching Russian, and simply haven't had the time to start over again
> (though lesson 1 is much more along the lines of what I envision than the
> rest).

Well, there are also my lessons, which lojbab and Nick may take up. I don't 
have time to do any more work on them for the time being, but anyone is 
welcome to do what they want with them (assuming proper credit is given).

robin.tr