----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Wisti" <brian / coolnamehere.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: Internationalization


> I looked quickly at Lojban and Esperanto sites.  Esperanto seems 
> easier to 
> learn from first glance.  You mentioned that people on this list were 
> familiar with some of the artificial languages.  If they notice this 
> exchange, I would love to hear from them about which might make the 
> easiest 
> to translate documentation to and from.

Esperanto easier to learn than Lojban... I think you said
a mouthful there. ;)

Lojban is great in that it is wonderfully exact and there
are intricate mechanisms for gradations of meaning and
mechanisms for disambiguation. Yes, it's machine parseable.
However, it's not the syntax that makes it difficult. It's 
how all the little pieces relate and interact. Remember 
your ninth grade biology? Lojban is a little more complex
than photosynthesis. :) Just my opinion. I can never 
remember what bridi and gismu (etc.) are and how they work.

As for Esperanto: It was designed more to be useful and
easily learned than to be scientifically exact and 
unambiguous. It's pretty easy to learn (from what I've
seen -- I don't really know it) and it's been around for
120 years or so. Of all the conlangs ever made (and there
are probably more than you think), this is the most
practical, useful, and widespread of them all. Yes, it
does have its faults -- it probably is too eurocentric 
and it does have its irregularities despite efforts to
avoid them.

As for the practicality of writing docs in Esperanto...
it seems a little problematic to me. Most programmers
can hardly be bothered to write docs in their *own*
native language. :) :)

Yet if someone wanted to take steps in this direction, I'd
go along just for the sheer novelty of it.

We'd probably have to come up with some neologisms (or 
maybe compounds, if they are allowed). What Esperanto word 
would we use for "closure"? What about these terms: Memory
location, garbage collection, iterator, object-oriented, 
method, class, definition, dynamic, variable, constant,
module? What about names for punctuation like braces,
brackets, parentheses, and so on? (Even English speakers
can't agree on these. One man's bracket is another man's
parenthesis. And never mind the numerous names for #, such
as pound, number, sharp, octothorpe, ...)

The more I think about it, the less practical it seems. :)

Cheers,
Hal