Possible orthography convention - would this help anyone?

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

I have been studying Russian, and have learned about an orthography convention
that may be helpful if adopted for Lojban.  Like the use of << and >>
for quotations, periods for mandatory pauses even when obvious by the word
formation rules and ( and ) parentheses for the various forms of Lojban
parentheses, this convention would be totally optional: the orthography
would not substitute for any Lojban words, and would not have any special
requirement in speaking, although people might tend to insert phrasing pauses
in accordance with the convention as an aid to listener understanding.

Specifically, Russian, like Lojban, does not use a verb "to be" =
"du" in most of its sentences.  In equational sentences, it uses a dash
(which I'll represent as --) where the "to be" would normally go.  The
convention is not used after a pronoun, or in other simple cases - it appears
from my limited observations that it merely helps break up a long sentence
by dividing it at a structurally mportant place - one that often serves as
a phrase break within the sentence.

(Ivan will please correct me on any applicable information on this convention.)

The appropriate equivalent Lojban convention would be to allow a dash before
a "cu" marking the main selbri of a bridi.  The dash would, like Russian, not
be used after a pronoun and probably not after a single name, as the only
sumti before the selbri.  It would be used, however, after a lenu clause, or
after multiple sumti or other phrases appearing before the main selbrixD.

In Russian, the dash is apprantly not used before most negations.  However
for Lojban, I would suggest that it would be most useful when the text uses
a tense or negation on the selbri, and hence probably does not need a "cu".
We don;t yet have a lot of usage of such complex sentences, except perhaps
by Nick, and especially not in tensed and negated{ sentences.

Examples:

lenu mi klama le zarci -- cu pluka mi
leni mi djuno fi la rusyban. -- ca na zmadu leni la .iVAN. djuno fi la gliban.

This is very much ONLY a proposal, not a policy.  But people have wanted some
such conventions, and tehy were discussed at length a few issues ago (JL12
or Jl13, I think), so I figured I'd toss this out on the table for
discussion.

Opinions?

lojbab