Subject: fanvyca'a

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 17:58:12 -0400

I've found myself looking for a Lojban word for "to compile", in the computer
sense. There is a lujvo for "compiler", fanvyca'a, and when I looked at the
place structure to find which place is the code that is compiled, I found that
there wasn't one. This strikes me as being incredibly unlojbanic.

The line in the lujvo file is: 

fanvyca'a:fanva+cabra:translator-machine; compiler:$cabra1 $=fanva1 $fanva3 $fanva4 $cabra3

Meaning that the place structure would be something like:
x1 is a compiler for translating language x2 to language x3 operated by x4

Whoever made this lujvo left no possibility of it being used to mean the verb
"compile", by leaving out fanva2! Also, the person using the compiler (x4)
seems rather irrelevant to the meaning of the word. Finally,
'translator-apparatus' makes me think more of Babelfish or jbofi'e than of gcc.
Since 'samselpla' already refers to computer source code, it seems the most
appropriate to use at least the 'selpla' part in this lujvo. (Including 'skami'
in the lujvo would result in the unwieldy 'samborselplafanva'.)

I propose this lujvo instead:
selplafanva:se+platu+fanva:plan-translate; compile:$fanva1 $platu2 $=fanva2 $fanva3 $fanva4
x1 compiles source code x2 from language x3 to language x4

(Hmm. Can binary code be considered a language?)

Then, "le selplafanva" would refer to the compiler, so there is no need for
"fanvyca'a".
-- 
Rob Speer