Subject: Re: [lojban] Dictionary format

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 13:37:17 -0400

At 07:47 PM 04/17/2001 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> >> And how would you format the English-Lojban side?
> >
> >Dunno. Probably:
> >
> >animal danlu [dal, da'u]
> > x1 is an animal/creature of species x2; x1 is
> > biologically animate
> >
> > (cf. banfi, cinki, cipni, finpe, jukni, respa, since,
> > mabru, bakni)

I will note that, when we finally produce a printed dictionary, economics 
will demand that we use space efficiently (or the book will be priced out 
of reach of most Lojbanists). That will mean small print, very little 
white space, and the use of typography to set off parts of the 
definition. Even with this, it would be difficult to keep the printed 
dictionary down to the length of the reference grammar, which means that 
the price will likely be higher.

>If you're going to provide a long explanation on the English-Lojban side, it
>should be in Lojban,

No one has the time to write Lojban explanations for a few thousand 
words. I will be happy to get place structures for more lujvo on the 
Lojban side, and use keyword text processing tools to produce the English 
to Lojban entries.

This is what has been done with the longer gismu entries in the official 
dictionary file.

www.lojban.org/draft-dictionary/ENGDICT.GIS

Ideally the lujvo entries will eventually approximate that form.

>the rafsi should be English rafsi (such as tri- for
>three), and the cross-references should be to English words.

The cross-references speak to the fact that the Lojban word given is not an 
exact translation of the English word, and that the cross-referenced 
entries might also be valid translations, given suitable context. English 
cross-references would not convey this information. No doubt, each 
cross-reference entry could be expanded by a word or two as you did with 
your "picture:" example to make it more useful, but that would take a lot 
of manual work. The best we could do automatically (and it would cost 
valuable space) would be to use the English keyword in the manner you 
suggested e.g. cf. amphibian: banfi, insect: cinki, bird: cipni, etc.)

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