using Punctuation Marks as a Visual Aid

[19:30] <rlpowell> The whole "audio-visual isomorphism doesn't include things like paragraph breaks" shifted me *a lot* on the topic of punctuation.

[19:30] <lojsmanix> .lojsmanix.

[19:30] <treed> Uh, it's a cmevla, so you can shorten it however you want.

[19:30] <donri> valsi: affix:sma

[19:30] <valsi> smaji = x1 (source) is quiet/silent/still at observation point x2 by standard x3.

[19:30] <treed> I actually kinda parse that as having something to do with nixli

[19:30] <lojsmanix> mi'e la .ctujveclic.

[19:31] <treed> lojbanic small girl?

[19:31] <treed> valsi: affix:nix

[19:31] <valsi> nixli = x1 is a girl young female person of age x2 immature by standard x3.

[19:31] <treed> yeah

[19:31] <Twey> rlpowell: Shifted you how?

[19:31] <rlpowell> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_laboratorium -- nifty

[19:31] <donri> treed: silent*

[19:32] <treed> er, yeah

[19:32] <Twey> rlpowell: I'd see that as shifting you *towards* (things like) hyphens, if anything — it's another example of something that is nice to have for visual clarity without affecting the meaning of the sentence.

[19:32] <rlpowell> Twey: To being bothered less by it.

[19:32] <Twey> Ah, right.

[19:32] <rlpowell> Yes, that's what I'm saying.

[19:32] <Twey> *nod*

[19:32] * treed is still bothered by it.

[19:32] <rlpowell> I had a kneejerk negative reaction that doesn't match my current intellectual beliefs.

[19:32] <rlpowell> treed: So am I, I just no longer feel that I can justify my bothered-ness.

[19:33] <Twey> Yeah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHIocNOHd7A

[19:33] <Twey> rlpowell: *nod*

[19:34] <Twey> treed: Do things like paragraph breaks or newlines also bother you?

[19:34] <rlpowell> Having a completely bizarre semi-formal ... not calligraphic. What do you call a language's system of punctuation and stuff?

[19:34] <rlpowell> There's a term clsn uses to describe how Samaritan X is different from Hebrew X, even though it's nearly the same writing system.

[19:34] <Twey> Typography?

[19:34] <rlpowell> Like they have a tradition of lining up the first letters of things to spell interesting stuff the other way.

[19:35] <rlpowell> No, not typography; that's the letters themselves. The ways in which they are arranged and used visually.

[19:35] <donri> Twey: Arrows! u'i←pei

[19:35] <Twey> donri: Cute :þ

[19:35] <donri> Then you can cluster LENU properly

[19:36] <donri> lo→nu gau←mi mupli

[19:36] <donri> yyyyy

[19:36] <donri> zo'o←→cu'i

[19:36] <Twey> rlpowell: Typography covers the arrangement of letters and things like punctuation, too

[19:36] <treed> Twey: No, but that's just positioning.

[19:37] <Twey> Ah, true.

[19:37] <rlpowell> Anyways, having a bizarre and semi-formal X with lots of weird characters in it would fit with the nerdiness of Lojban well enough. Like programming languages with a kernel language and then a bunch of syntactic shortcuts.

[19:37] <Twey> donri: I'm not sure I get your arrows.

[19:37] <donri> I don't mind added punctuation as long as its an aid and not a requirement for disambiguation

[19:37] <Twey> rlpowell: Heh, yes.

[19:37] <donri> But, I just don't think the hyphen is pretty :D

[19:38] <Twey> rlpowell: Especially so long as it can be easily filtered out and the resulting pure Lojban read instead.

[19:38] == tomoj [email protected] has quit Remote host closed the connection

[19:38] <rlpowell> Twey: Quite.

[19:38] <donri> u'i↑¯¯¯ punctuation for tone!

[19:39] <Twey> rlpowell: I'm personally of the opinion that any non-Lojban characters should be ignored by parsers (except in non-Lojban quotes, obviously).

[19:39] <rlpowell> I still like to keep my tone flat when speaking Lojban.

[19:39] <Twey> gerna .o'a-dai

[19:39] <gerna> not grammatical: ._o'a-dai_ ⚠

[19:39] <Twey> ^ broken pe'i-ru'e

[19:39] <rlpowell> It helps me shift state towards using UI and stuff.