WikiDiscuss

On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 09:17:54AM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > Hmmm...
> >
> > The problem is that Rob and I are defining pi'e more broadly than as a
> > high base digit separator. We allow pi'e for any tuple, where the
> > components can be signed numbers, I even allow fractions and complex
> > numbers as tuple components.
>
> OK. John has made it very clear that this is *not* the purpose of pi'e,
> that jo'i is the general tuple creator.

Okay. So should we learn to say times like:
lijo'i pamu boi cize cu ca tcika
instead of:
li pamu pi'e cize ca tcika
?

(And why in the world does jbofi'e require {cu} there?)

Dates and times really are tuples, not weird bases. We don't think of the
components of a time as being digits. Dates aren't even in a consistent base.
And even outside of Lojban, you can express a very precise time with a decimal
point after the seconds, and people understand exactly what you mean.

When expressing times and dates, we sometimes elide numbers in a different way
than you would expect based on where the mixed-base decimal point is. For
dates, the numbers even go in the wrong direction half the time.

If pi'e cannot be a tuple, then times and dates would need to use jo'i.

I think that using jo'i here is too wordy. I would prefer an alternate
convention: {pi} is allowed inside a {pi'e} part, except that {pipi'e} is a
mixed-base decimal point. (Incidentally, few people realize you can have a
decimal point er, radix point in any base other than 10, let alone would want
to use one for base 17 or above, so I think the extra syllable is justified.)

So my interpretation is that {pi'e} has been taken over to make a tuple, and
that the way we can express numbers in large bases is with a pi'e-tuple.

The alternative is to keep the shorter form reserved only for speaking in
actual bases above 16, which nobody uses.

--
Rob Speer