Re: [announce] Invented Languages magazine

Rick, I've ordered it out of regard & respect for the editor, but I rue the
hardcopy-only policy. Postage costs me more than the magazine itself. Hardcopy
imposes further costs in physical storage and time spent either carefully
filing or else in hunting for what was not carefully filed. Now that pdfs are
free and easy to create, hardcopy has no great typographical advantages,
either. In my academic life I try to pursue a policy of reading articles only
when they are available as pdfs (I don't yet succeed, but get closer to success
every year). And I hanker for the day when electronic paper is as legible as
paper paper. [I confess I am one of those people who has forsaken their antique
& much loved vinyl collection (& also the CD collection) in favour of mp3s.)

That said, I half-agree with you. Whereas you say that "people write more carefully
and read more attentively when dealing with a rare hardcopy document than they
do when wading through the endless flood of documents available on the
internet", I feel that if a document aspires to command more than the most and
merest casual attention from readers, then it should be prepared with great
typographical care (so distributed as pdf rather than html or rtf or MS Word
doc etc).

I'm also curious about the polemical-sounding peroration prominent at the foot of
the main page of glossopoeia.org: "It's your language. One of the few things on
Earth that would not exist if you did not exist. It lives in your brain and
reflects the way your mind works. Never forget who it belongs to!" Who is the
You, I wonder? Is its reference singular or plural ("thy language" or
"youse's/yall's language")? And what is the implied theory or ideology of
intellectual property underlying the peroration, and why is it given so
prominent a position?

--And.

Rick Harrison, On 24/05/2008 01:21:
> The first edition of Invented Languages is published.
>
> See http://www.glossopoeia.org/ for more information.
>

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