clearly asking the question - new gismu list or not?

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

There exists this draft gismu list update, last worked on last fall.  That
update is nowhere near complete, but the place structures ARE presumably much
clearer than the ones in the offficial 'baseline gismu list', and in many
cases reflect changes and developments.

The question is whether to make this a new official list, and scrap use of the
older list in official contexts.

The tradeoff considerations are significant. 600+ people have the existing list.
The new list, with its long defintiions, cannot be printed in two columns,
and the printed list would therefore be twice as long, or about 50 total pages
for both orders.  Bob Chassell has also recommended adding in some definitional
entries on the English side to make it more useful, such as "house", "den" and
"lair" for "zdani", which would make the list even longer.

We cannot put out such a list as a supplement to TL for financial reasons, andd
.
Payment rates for TL are too low for us to put any extras in it these days.
I have held off going to a new list because $5 is a lot to ask someone to 
pay for something official yet likely to be obsolete within a year.  And
not putting it in TL means that I would have to deal with a burst of 
individual orders over a period of a month or more, which is enough of a workload so as to disrupt other  priorities.  The net is not a sufficient mode of
distribution for the new list, especially since a large number of people still
do not know how to get a file from PLS (including myself), either because we
haven't tried, or because the instructions are non-transparent and include
too many options that we don;t understand and no obvious default. (Mark and
Jerry are supposedly working on this).  

The choices are these:
- stay with the current list until the 'reference manual' is assembled, h
hopefully by the end of the year;  the reference manual will include gismu list
cmavo list, machine gramamr, BNF, and who knows what else.
- go to the new list as of either JL15 (hopefully in a week or two), or JL16
(probably in late September) nad either
---include it as a supplement, in which case I am shoopping for around $300-
    $500 in donmations to cover the shortfall I expect, or
--- send it to level 2 and 3 automatically if they have balkances (our original
 l
    plan for the definition of these levels was automatic update for them, but
    frankly, less than 1/3 of even these people have positive balances so that
    we have never bothered to put the update system into effect).  This is also
    more expensive for us, since we cannot use bulkrate.
--- issue it only if ordered, in which case we may get anywhere from 1 to 150
    special individual orders over a two month period.  The high end would
    take up to a quarter of my time to fill that many orders, which would
    disrupt textbook, reference manual, and other activities.
We will in any case be going to the list de facto if not de jure with the
issuance of the new LogFlash, which requires the new list format, and it is
safe to say that issuing that new LogFlash is primarily waiting for the list.

Opinions? Other options?  The only consideration that is I will not go to a new
list without making it available in printed form and urging people to uodate
to the new list.  Electronic distribution is not a sufficient medium.

lojbab