Making a jbo locale file and package for installation, need some suggestions.

[Feilen Haksan]

I've decided to scrape together a Lojban localization file, to match the one used and distributed for Esperanto, to make it so that open source software that takes advantage of locales can easily be translated.

However I've run into a couple things that I think would be best to consult on first. Here's a (mostly comments) version of what I have so far:

http://pastebin.com/WX3mTMeZ

Anything with %% is to point out something specific.

Date/Time:

Monday-Friday can use the planetary Lojban equivalents, or the numerical equivalents. Which would be preferable?

Each month has a lujvo and cmene equivalent, again, which would be best?

What do we want for 3-letter abbreviations?

What date format do we use, or do we just inherit it from somewhere else?

Numbers:

There's no way I can make it output digits as letters, unfortunately. I can control decimal points, thousands seperators, and a couple of others. Should we leave them as-is?

On currency, do we have a symbol we wish to use? Would it make sense to use EUR? Do we want +/-, just -, or even {ma'u|ni'u}?

LC_MESSAGES:

Only really one thing here, what letters are yes, what letters are no?

Phone/address:

Does it really need any change, and if so, where?

Most of what's in the file above is still what it was when I got it, almost everything has multiple ways to go about doing them, many more regional than language influenced.

In 2010 David Gowers made a simple Lojban locale which pulled most of its information from en_AU (and in fact that's pretty much all we need!) but making a definitive jbo package to match the Esperanto one would probably be more beneficial overall.

Also he mentioned an Arch package. Unfortunately he hasn't been around the list for a while :<  

Any/all suggestions are welcome!

[Pierre Abbat]

On Monday, July 08, 2013 14:52:25 Feilen Haksan wrote:
> I've decided to scrape together a Lojban localization file, to match the
> one used and distributed for Esperanto, to make it so that open source
> software that takes advantage of locales can easily be translated.
>
> However I've run into a couple things that I think would be best to consult
> on first. Here's a (mostly comments) version of what I have so far:
>
> http://pastebin.com/WX3mTMeZ
>
> Anything with %% is to point out something specific.
>

> *Date/Time:*

>
> Monday-Friday can use the planetary Lojban equivalents, or the
> numerical equivalents. Which would be preferable?

I'd prefer either the fire-water-wood system or the color system to the number
system. AFAIR the dispute about whether to put "moi" in the number day names
hasn't been resolved. The fire system is known throughout East Asia (China uses
numbers, but I'm sure that Chinese have seen dates written in kanji in
Japanese); the color system is peculiar to Lojban.

> Each month has a lujvo and cmene equivalent, again, which would be best?

Fu'ivla. The Gregorian calendar is the fourth version of the Roman calendar,
so we should use the Roman names. Note that "martio", "prilio", "madjio",
"djunio", and "djulio" cannot be entered in jbovlaste because of a bug in
vlatai.

> What do we want for 3-letter abbreviations?

Fire: sol, lur, fag, jac, mud, jim, der.
Color: xun, naj, pel, crn, ccn, bla, zir. Not sure whether Wed should be ri'o
or rio instead of crn.
Months: ian, fre, mar, pri, mad, djn, djl, avg, sep, okt, nov, dec.
Just asking that presupposes the question: how do we indicate an abbreviation
in Lojban? If we don't indicate them as such, someone's going to try to parse
"naj" as a cmevla, or something like that. We can't use the period, as that's
used in Lojban to denote a required pause. I've proposed using ՟ for this.

> What date format do we use, or do we just inherit it from somewhere else?

For all-numeric dates, year-month-day. Dates written out in full are like "lo
8moi be lo djulio be lo 2013moi nanca".

> *Numbers:*
> *
> *

> There's no way I can make it output digits as letters, unfortunately. I can
> control decimal points, thousands seperators, and a couple of others.
> Should we leave them as-is?

The file has a comma as the decimal point. I prefer the period, because that's
what programming languages use. My father was French, so I am familiar with
using the comma.

> On currency, do we have a symbol we wish to use? Would it make sense to use
> EUR? Do we want +/-, just -, or even {ma'u|ni'u}?

Until someone starts issuing a JBR or comes up with a symbol for it, beats me.
+/- or just - is fine. There's a symbol ¤ called the currency symbol, but for
what currency, I don't know.

> *LC_MESSAGES:*
> *
> *

> Only really one thing here, what letters are yes, what letters are no?

j (for ja'a) is yes and n is no.

> *Phone/address:*
> *
> *

> Does it really need any change, and if so, where?

The phone number is fine, though not all countries use 00 as the international
calling code. As to addresses, I don't know what an address in Lojban would
look like.

As to names, we don't have equivalents for "Mr." and "Mrs.".

Pierre
--
lo ponse be lo mruli ku po'o cu ga'ezga roda lo ka dinko

[Feilen Haksan]

Pierre,

Thank you very much for your detailed response. I've adjusted as follows: http://pastebin.com/yb3EyzWR

Left currency symbol as EUR. 

Decimal point is a [.], as it's likely computing will be a first point on lojbanists' priorities.

Added days using the color system, which seems more systematic than the alternative. 

Short date format is fine.

LC_MESSAGES now accepts 'j' or 'n'

Paper... paper? Paper.

Titles removed from names.

Packaging script that comes with Arch Esperanto package (and most other Esperanto references) have been converted. It will install as "jbo UTF-8" in /etc/locale.gen, and you can enable it as the default language by setting the LOCALE field of your /etc/locale.conf to "jbo.utf8" once it's finished.

What's left:

Should we even have a thousands seperator?

{crino} still undecided for abbreviation.

I couldn't find a list of fu'ivla-ized Gregorian calendar months, if you could list names that would work fine.

Date format has to include (to be consistent with the current one): Day of week, day of month, month abbr, year, 24-hr time, timezone. 

Remainder of name information needs to be finalized, should we use {la}?

Filling out and unicode-paging fields when it's finalized.

[Feilen Haksan]

Hmm. Well, it seems that there's some community disagreement. Gregorian calendar and color- or material-based names isn't, well, culturally neutral, which Lojban is supposed to be. There's already some standardization that ties days to numbers, but there's also some that use planets. I'm leaning for numbers. Does anyone else have a weigh-in?

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[John E Clifford]

Well, with numbers you have to solve the question of which day is number one.  Not to mention the issue of what relgious tradition to follow with all of these (and having weeks at all, for that matter). 

---

From: Feilen Haksan <feile...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, July 8, 2013 9:03 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Making a jbo locale file and package for installation, need some suggestions.

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[Feilen Haksan]

Clifford: Well, as it stands, Lojban already has a standard for what day is 1: Monday. Sunday is either 0 or 7, and in this case would make the most sense being 7 because dates are 1-indexed. 

Since numbers are the most culturally neutral alternative, as well as being completely regular in Lojban, I'll use them for months and days. Lesse.. what's left...

- Should we even have a thousands seperator?

- Date format has to include (to be consistent with the current one): Day of week, day of month, month abbr, year, 24-hr time, timezone. I'm thinking ISO-8601.

- Remainder of name information needs to be finalized, should we use {la}?

- Filling out and unicode-paging fields when it's finalized.

[Pierre Abbat]

On Monday, July 08, 2013 18:39:10 Feilen Haksan wrote:
> Paper... paper? Paper.

210 by 297 is A4, which is the most common paper size. I say leave it. It's
not a phrase to be translated.

> I couldn't find a list of fu'ivla-ized Gregorian calendar months, if you
> could list names that would work fine.

ianvari, frebuari, martio, prilio, madjio, djunio, djulio, avgusto,
septembero, oktobero, novmbero, decmbero.

> Remainder of name information needs to be finalized, should we use {la}?

Depends on whether the name is in Lojban.

Pierre
--
ve ka'a ro klaji la .romas. se jmaji

[Feilen Haksan]

I'm afraid the consensus from IRC is on purely numerical calendar names. The only problem there is in 3-letter abbreviations, both months and days, and how to distinguish them.

I wasn't going to do anything with the paper anyway. I doubt if anything even looks at that field very much anymore.

[la arxokuna]

I can agree with Pierre that color system of jefydei (jeftu djedi) might be better.

It'll give a flavor of liveliness to otherwise mathematically precise logical language.

This color system can be part of a totally independent Lojbani culture.

I can't agree with animal naming of months ({mlajukma'i} for July) as zodiac is not a stable thing throughout history due to precession effects. And it's not culturally neutral (some nations divided the route of the sun into more than 12 elements).

However, as Georgian calendar is official (like metric system) it'd be wise to use Georgian names.

Why should we name January the first month when New Year is in February in China?

Why September is {sozymasti} when as it's etymology suggests it's in fact the seventh month?

[Jorge Llambías]

On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 12:44 AM, Feilen Haksan <feile...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm afraid the consensus from IRC is on purely numerical calendar names. The only problem there is in 3-letter abbreviations, both months and days, and how to distinguish them.

That's one of the problems, but I wouldn't say it's the only one. If Lojban had gismu for "x1 is the x2-th day of the week", "x1 is the x2-th day of the month" and "x1 is x2 days in duration", then the numeric system to name the days of the week might work. As it is, we only have a gismu for the third of those relations, and the most obvious meaning for "cibdei" is "x1 is three days in duration", so the convention that makes it mean "Wednesday" relies on more or less ignoring the meaning of "djedi". In this system,presumably "reljeftu" would not be used for "fortnight", but for "week 2 (of the month?)". "xavyma'i" is not "semester" but "June". Presumably "dekna'a" can still be "decade", whereas "pavnonyna'a" would be "the year 10"?

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Feilen Haksan]

I did sort of like the colors, as they follow a similar regularity to a numerical system without the associated blandness. However most/all of the people I spoke to on IRC disagreed. I told them to weigh in here, so I'll wait for their responses. If they don't in a day or two, I'll fall back to using color systems. But what about months?

The thing is, it's less important what is more exciting, but what's more intuitive, and more directly what's most common in Lojban. I could make a @skari sublocale if desired, using more standard Lojbanic months for the root locale.

[la arxokuna]

On Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:00:32 PM UTC+4, Feilen Haksan wrote:

I did sort of like the colors, as they follow a similar regularity to a numerical system without the associated blandness. However most/all of the people I spoke to on IRC disagreed. I told them to weigh in here, so I'll wait for their responses. If they don't in a day or two, I'll fall back to using color systems. But what about months?

The thing is, it's less important what is more exciting, but what's more intuitive, and more directly what's most common in Lojban.

We are not talking about Muslims lunar or Judaic lunisolar or Chinese or whatever calendar. We area talking about Gregorian calendar, a system preseting certain fixes of approximating tropical year ({djedi li 365,2421998} long).

So 

ianvari

februari (note that Wikipedia uses {frebruari} which is not necessary under camxes now)

martio

prilio

madjio

djunio

djulio

avgusto

septembero

oktobero

novmbero

decmbero

[Feilen Haksan]

This seems sane. For now I'm just going to stick with gregorian convention, even though I can't seem to find it used anywhere in Lojban texts. Any suggestions as far as days of the week? If rlpowell's ever available I may find time to consult him to resolve this.

[Pierre Abbat]

On Tuesday, July 09, 2013 06:52:54 la arxokuna wrote:
> I can't agree with animal naming of months ({mlajukma'i} for July) as
> zodiac is not a stable thing throughout history due to precession effects.
> And it's not culturally neutral (some nations divided the route of the sun
> into more than 12 elements).

I've used them in the past for months of the calendar, but I think they're
better for zodiac signs.

> However, as Georgian calendar is official (like metric system) it'd be wise
> to use Georgian names.

Several languages, such as Finnish and Polish (but not Russian), use words
derived from the same language as month names. The problem with that is that a
month name like "listopad" (leaf-fall) doesn't denote the same time of year
worldwide in a language not tied to one latitude. That's why I think we should
use the Latin-derived names.

As to days of the week, I don't know of a natlang with three ways of naming
the days, but I do know of one with two, namely Galician-Portuguese. Luns-
martes-mércores is used in the north; segunda/terça/quarta-feira in the south
and outside of Iberia.

Pierre
--
Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.

[la arxokuna]

On Tuesday, July 9, 2013 5:52:54 PM UTC+4, la arxokuna wrote:

I can agree with Pierre that color system of jefydei (jeftu djedi) might be better.

It'll give a flavor of liveliness to otherwise mathematically precise logical language.

This color system can be part of a totally independent Lojbani culture.

I can't agree with animal naming of months ({mlajukma'i} for July) as zodiac is not a stable thing throughout history due to precession effects. And it's not culturally neutral (some nations divided the route of the sun into more than 12 elements).

However, as Georgian calendar is official (like metric system) it'd be wise to use Georgian names.

o'anai clearly I meant to say GREGORIAN.

[Michael Turniansky]

  Well, before any of the IRC people weigh, I vote color days.   I HATE the number day system as being very culturally biased.  Of course, I also created the color day system, so I am me-biased...

   --gejyspa

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[Feilen Haksan]

I... May have missed something. Numbers are very culturally biased, because of course no one uses numbers. Colors on the other hand aren't because you made it (or it's used in China?)

I still think neutrality is important, but gleki brought up a good point on IRC : There's no way to be neutral when we're using someone else's calendar already.

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[Michael Turniansky]

  Actually, there are natlangs that do use numbers.  For example, Hebrew's days of the week translate to first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, Sabbath.  This system has been in use for thousands of years and still is.  (And of course is in direct conflict to the the nominal lojbanic system).  And it steps on the toes of anyone who equates the seventh day with Saturday (i.e. those form the jegvo religions).

         --gejyspa

[Michael Turniansky]

(Arabic has the same system as Hebrew, btw)

[la arxokuna]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 5:11:42 PM UTC+4, Feilen Haksan wrote:

I... May have missed something. Numbers are very culturally biased, because of course no one uses numbers.

Chinese uses numbers to name Gregorian months.

 

Colors on the other hand aren't because you made it (or it's used in China?)

I still think neutrality is important, but gleki brought up a good point on IRC : There's no way to be neutral when we're using someone else's calendar already.

ti'e even bacteria have 7-day cycles. so it might be neutral. Of course we might ask {ma jalge?}. Is it humanity that forces bacteria to follow this worldwide artificial cycle. Or is it nature that forces people to use it's 7-day cycle?

[Michael Turniansky]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 9:27 AM, la arxokuna <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:

Colors on the other hand aren't because you made it (or it's used in China?)

I still think neutrality is important, but gleki brought up a good point on IRC : There's no way to be neutral when we're using someone else's calendar already.

ti'e even bacteria have 7-day cycles. so it might be neutral. Of course we might ask {ma jalge?}. Is it humanity that forces bacteria to follow this worldwide artificial cycle. Or is it nature that forces people to use it's 7-day cycle?

  As I brought up back in Octobor 2010, out of 7 billion people in the world, of those that use a week system, approximately only 25 million people (the Igbo) use a other-than-7-day system.  So, while it might irk them, the 7 day system is pretty much widespread on this planet.

          --gejyspa

[Feilen Haksan]

Most also use a decimal number system, it doesn't make it any less arbitrary. I do think that colors would reduce confusion and be significantly more intuitive, however a more official tally of active jbopre would probably be smart.

As for months, have we still settled on gregorian? It's, at the very least, widespread, but we don't have a zero index. (This may not be a problem however, as I don't think locale specifications take that into account)

[Michael Turniansky]

  Don't confuse "arbitrariness" with "cultural non-neutrality".  It's arbitrary that we don't chop off our pinkie toes on the left foot, and yet, I don't know of any culture that does so, so "keeping pinkie toes intact" is culturally neutral.

     --gejyspa

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[John E Clifford]

IF you want to use the standard of international commerce (etc.), then you are stuck with a seven-day week, beginning with Sunday and proceeding with some variant of Moon, War God, Chief God, Storm God, Love Goddess and Old Fart, and with a dozen months of quite inexplicable meanings in their context (the numbered ones are two off in each case, for example) and randomly varying lengths.  Color names for the days of the week are as cultural as anything else, since different cultures (and languages) divide the spectrum differently, with no guarantee that here will be seven sections.   Finding names for the months is even trickier (unless you go to numbers again) since associations with what happens in that month will vary from place to place (one country's seed time is another's harvest,and so on).  There may be more rational approaches (13 months of 28 days each and an occasional fiddle, say, which makes weeks have some meaning), just as there are more reasonable number systems (for some purposes), but for acceptance in the real world, this creaking structure seems the best to use, while keeping an eye out for a successful reform.

---

From: Feilen Haksan <feile...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 9:06 AM

Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Making a jbo locale file and package for installation, need some suggestions.

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[Feilen Haksan]

We're not creating a new calendar here. We're creating a Locale to fit IBM locale specifications. 7 days, 12 months, date format. Actually, since most people will just use this to more easily set 'jbo' as an enabled language, LC_TIME will probably be rarely used. We just need sensible names and abbreviations.

[John E Clifford]

Well, in the 1920s in the US, a large number of young women did indeed opt to have their pinkie toes on both feet lopped off.  The goal was to fit into the stylish long slim high-heel shoes.  This practice dies out as young girls were forced into narrow shoes from an early age and so grew up not quite Chinese but seriously footbound for all that.

---

From: Michael Turniansky <mturn...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 9:16 AM

Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Making a jbo locale file and package for installation, need some suggestions.

[Pierre Abbat]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 09:16:38 Michael Turniansky wrote:
> Actually, there are natlangs that do use numbers. For example, Hebrew's
> days of the week translate to first day, second day, third day, fourth day,
> fifth day, sixth day, Sabbath. This system has been in use for thousands
> of years and still is. (And of course is in direct conflict to the the
> nominal lojbanic system). And it steps on the toes of anyone who equates
> the seventh day with Saturday (i.e. those form the jegvo religions).

So do Portuguese (as I mentioned earlier) and Greek, except that they have a
non-numeric word for Sunday and, in Greek, for Friday. However, Hmong, if I
remember right from a conversation many years ago, numbers Monday as first.
Slavic languages (and Hungarian which borrowed some Slavic words) call Tuesday
second, Thursday fourth, and Friday fifth, but Wednesday middle, indicating
that Sunday would be zeroth if it had a number.

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 09:11:42 Feilen Haksan wrote:
> I... May have missed something. Numbers are very culturally biased, because
> of course no one uses numbers. Colors on the other hand aren't because you
> made it (or it's used in China?)

The system used in Japan and Korea (Chinese uses numbers) is the fire-water-
wood system. As the Japanese write the days of the week in Chinese characters,
it's likely that the Chinese know which day is fire-day, even though the
Chinese use numbers.

Pierre
--
The Black Garden on the Mountain is not on the Black Mountain.

[Feilen Haksan]

So, barring any conclusive ideas, I'm going to read over what's been posted here thusfar, and just use what suggestions seem most sane. I'll update it in the event of any official word on the subject.