TECH.CHALLENGE: Pangram (was: Letters ...)

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

>Date:         Thu, 24 Sep 1992 16:06:31 BST
>From: "Dr. C.D. Wright" <cdw10%UXB.LIVERPOOL.AC.UK@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU>

>Just quickly, although longer than the others, I prefer ...

>   pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.

You can, of course, see where this is going.  I'm surprised there hasn't
been an effort already.  Here comes the quest for the lojban pangram.
Guidelines, for my money, should be:

- no cmene or le'avla.  Cop-out.
- all lojban symbols except _,_ (which only happens in cmene and le'avla)
  must appear (not counting such optionals as _;_ or _:_, but counting _._,
  even though it's optional.  _._ may only be placed at a *required* pause,
  though.)
- Must be grammatical utterance.
- no fair using zoi or lo'u/le'u to throw in nonsense to get tough
  letters.
- no experimental/unknown cmavo, of course.
- Desiderata:
  - should be a bridi, not bare sumti or string of exclamations.
  - should not have sumti in undefined places, if possible (e.g. nothing in
    the sixth place of {prenu} or whatnot, even though that parses).
  - should have some sort of comprehensible meaning, though it may be
    nonsense (i.e. the meaning needn't be reasonable, but it should be
    capable of being understood in some fashion).
  - should be as short as possible.
  - shouldn't use letterals just to get letters in cheaply.  In fact, avoid
    letterals if you can, except maybe to get {y}.
  - lujvo should be used sparingly, and if used, should make sense somehow.
    You can get {y} using hesitation or letterals, but don't turn down an
    otherwise good sentence because of a lujvo.

The desiderata are roughly in order of importance.  I'd imagine it's a
little easier to find *a* pangram in lojban than in English, although
finding a *good* one (where "good" is defined something like above) isn't
easy in almost any language.

Have fun with it!

~mark