Hello

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>After a long absence from the list, I am back.  Could lojbab or someone fill
>me in on the latest news about lojban from the past year or so?  Are the
>textbook or dictionary published yet?
>
>----
>Bob Slaughter
>rslau@atl.mindspring.com

Ummm.  You haven't missed much %^)

Briefly, nothing has been published, though the reference grammar is close
indeed, since the draft is done and being indexed, whereupon it will be
put into html form and hopefully publishged pretty shortly thereafter.
The reference grammar is best obtained from the ftp site per my .sig
(we are using my digex account to host the site for now), and runs around
650 pages by our current estimates.

All of the language discussed in the reference grammar will be baselined
with its publication or  at the end of the year whichever comes FIRST.
The lexicon as covered in the dictionary will be baselined as of 30 June
1997 or the publication of the dictionary, and it is likely the date-deadline
will beat the publication but not by too much, since there will be no reason
to delay after that point.

These two baselines will constitute the start of the 5-year minimum baseline
period wherein we hope the Lojban community will take hold of the language
with no fear of it changing.

Lojban List has had minimal traffic since Jorge Llambias moved back to
Argentina (though he has a net account, he isn't posting a lot these days).
We are not entirely sure why there has been such a dearth of traffic, though
one reason is that the conlang list, which a lot of Lojbanists subscribe to
has had overwhelming volume for several months and some of the more
prolific Lojbanists have been spending time trying to participate in those
discussions.

In general if you post something in Lojban on Lojban List, a couple of people
will notice and respond - I think that there are a few people who are tired
of talking ABOUT Lojban and want to talk IN Lojban.

If Lojban List becomes more active, it will be with its largest membership
ever.  I counted around 110 subscribers the other day.

So let use hear from some of you who have been silent.  Please don't rely on
Lojbab to stimulate and maintain discussions - I've never been that good
at it, and should be spending my time on the book publication effort.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab
    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/";