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Acronyms |
As Easy As A-B-C? The Lojban Letteral System And Its Uses
The Lojban Reference Grammar |
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List of all auxiliary lerfu-word cmavo |
Since the first application of computers to non-numerical information, character sets have existed, mapping numbers (called ``character codes'') into selected lerfu, digits, and punctuation marks (collectively called ``characters''). Historically, these character sets have only covered the English alphabet and a few selected punctuation marks. International efforts are now underway to create a unified character set that can represent essentially all the characters in essentially all the world's writing systems. Lojban can take advantage of these encoding schemes by using the cmavo ``se'e'' (of selma'o BY). This cmavo is conventionally followed by digit cmavo of selma'o PA representing the character code, and the whole string indicates a single character in some computerized character set:
13.1) me'o se'ecixa cu lerfu
la .asycy'i'is. loi merko rupnu
the-expression [code] 36 is-a-letteral
in-set ASCII
for-the-mass-of American currency-units.
The character code 36 in ASCII represents
American dollars.
``$'' represents American dollars.
Understanding Example 13.1 depends on
knowing the value in the ASCII character set (one of the
simplest and oldest) of the ``$'' character.
Therefore, the ``se'e'' convention is only intelligible to
those who know the underlying character set. For precisely
specifying a particular character, however, it has the
advantages of unambiguity and (relative) cultural neutrality,
and therefore Lojban provides a means for those with access to
descriptions of such character sets to take advantage of them.
As another example, the Unicode character set (also known as ISO 10646) represents the international symbol of peace, an inverted trident in a circle, using the base-16 value 262E. In a suitable context, a Lojbanist may say:
13.2) me'o se'erexarerei sinxa le ka panpi
the-expression [code] 262E is-a-sign-of
the quality-of being-at-peace
When a ``se'e'' string appears in running discourse, some
metalinguistic convention must specify whether the number is
base 10 (as above) or some other base, and which character set
is in use.
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Previous
Acronyms |
As Easy As A-B-C? The Lojban Letteral System And Its Uses
The Lojban Reference Grammar |
Next
List of all auxiliary lerfu-word cmavo |