Re: What is Shoebox?

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!lojbab>]

I was hoping that Mark would do so, since he did the work, and many Lojban
List readers could benefit.  Shoebox is a Shareware toolbox for field
linguists built around a data base that allows optional fields on records
and variable length records, making it useful for recording field examples
and notes without worrying too much about data consistency.  It has a built
in interlinear translator, that on my suggestion, Mark got up and running
for Lojban text.  It is difficult to use in texts with lots of lujvo and
compounds, and the text I posted was about the first text that seemed
appropriate to shoe the tool off.  But it hasn't been written about on
Lojban List before now, so you didn't miss anything.  I was trying to give
Mark an excuse to brag about it a little and tell people how they can do
the same, and if it is WORTH doing on an individual basis.

Behind the scences, Nora is working on a longer term project of a
interlinear glosser program that will interact with the Lojban parser, thus
allowing both grammar AND gloss to be presented when desired, and eventually
perhaps even allow some context-sensitivity in the glossing, after the fashion
of her 1981-2 Loglan translation program that produced stilted but understand
able English for much of the Loglan language of the time.  Obviously, longer
term, this could evolve into a machine translator, but that isn't even be
being considered in the current design.

In short Dave, you haven't missed anything.


Mark: care to talk about your efforts a bit more, and give us the pros and cons.
Specifically, is this something novice Lojbanists could use in dealing with
Wallops and fairy tales, or does it take too much language knowledge
to take apart lujvo, etc., and/or is too manually intensive to really be a
boon to those who hate to look up words in their word-lists?

lojbab