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Ilo sitelen, a handmade computer for Toki Pona
- tobr 7y agoHere’s some kind of automatic translation: http://inamidst.com/services/tokipana?uri=https%3A%2F%2Ftoki.increpare.com%2Filo-sitelen%2F http://inamidst.com/services/tokipana?uri=https%3A%2F%2Ftoki...
- dhosek 7y agoThe machine translation is not completely comprehensible, but there's some beautifully strange things that came out of it. I emotion she strongly!
- schoen 7y agoI speak toki pona so I just made a manual translation, as follows: == Writing machine == * What am I trying to do? All computers are supposed to speak English. I dislike this. I wanted to make a toki pona-only computer. First I asked myself this: what do I want to do with my computer? jan Sate made a calculator. That calculator can work with toki pona numbers. It's a great tool, really fun! I felt like I wanted to be able to write my language using my machine. With this idea in mind I didn't say "computer" in the future. I said "writing machine". I wanted to make a writing machine. * Writing system Next, I thought: what kind of keyboard will people use to write toki pona? Toki pona has few words and few sounds. Its keys can likewise be few! This made me happy. But I thought - I can make it smaller! I had created a writing system called "multisound lines". With it, you can write toki pona using six keys! I could make this machine using only six [keys]! Awesome! * The controller and the display I bought a Raspberry Pi controller and this display. The display is good - I can send images to it: I attached the controller to the back of the display. Look at it: I bought a small keyboard ⌨️ . Subsequently I would change it and improve it a lot! Now I had everything. I could begin work! * First keyboard version The keyboard had round keys. I didn't like that. I gave it other keys and I put stickers on top of them: This is decent! This way I could pause the task. * sitelen pona I felt that I wanted to write in the sitelen pona [writing system]. This way, I could write all of the words of toki pona. I put a tool for this writing method into the controller (you can see it on GitHub). This was really fun! (It was really fun, but it was a lot of work too ). But, was the work over? Nope! I wanted to improve it: - I wanted to give it a case. - I wanted to improve the keyboard. * The case The writing machine was definitely good, but it didn't have a case: I wanted to figure out what a case could do. So I made a case using a bunch of boxes: This helped me. Mr. Luca had various measurement tools: Using these I learned a lot about measurements! I put these numbers into the Fusion 360 tool. This tool is really powerful and really useful. It gave me two schematics: Then, I bought some really strong boards. I felt that I could make a good case using these. But when I prototyped a case with them, a lot of mess-ups happened: I sure learned about what the boards wanted to do, heh! But, with the second attempt, everything was good. Was the case done yet? Nope! There was nothing in the bottom part of the screen. I wanted to put the machine's name in this region. I bought a name label from the Schildermax shop. When it arrived at my home, I put it on the bottom of the screen. This made me happy. The case was done. Awesome! * The keyboard I was unhappy with these keys: I wanted to improve it. But how? I bought these sticker sheets: I could put these images onto the keys. But this was terrible. I could remove the images with my hands. I wanted to have good keys. But how? My friend Tralamazza told me: "I have a machine for making stone. (This machine can make stone out of liquid.) This machine can make keys! If you send me the model for the keys, I'll make the keys." I used another person's key models. Using them, I could make models for my own keys. I sent these models to my friend. He made them and sent them to me: They looked great! I removed the supports from them and I put them onto my machine: But I felt like having them be composed of just one color was not that great. I wanted to color them. I colored them using a marker. But how did this coloring work? First, I put black all over the top of each key cap: Then, I removed it using alcohol wipes. But the black remained inside the openings: But this black was way inside the grooves and it would stay. :) This looked good to me. I blackened each key this way: I put it on the keyboard and the work was done. The computer project was done! * The writing machine is done! I am really happy with this machine. I use it every day. Now you know: making this machine was a lot of work. I don't want to make many writing machines! Big thanks to Tralamazza and Mr. Luca. They improved my project a lot and taught me a lot. Thanks to them!
- dhosek 7y agoThanks for the translation. I realized I was unfamiliar with Toki Pana while reading what you wrote. It seems an interesting language idea.
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoOh right, I cheated with one factual detail - it was turpentine and not alcohol :( (I tried alcohol first, but turpentine was waaaay better)
- schoen 7y ago"telo pi weka kule", I suppose. :-)
- chongli 7y agoI think machine for making stone is a 3D printer? I guess toki pona doesn’t have a word for that.
- schoen 7y agoYes, the original text links "machine for making stone" to https://www.creality3dshop.de/collections/3d-printer/products/creality3d-ld-002r-uv-resin-lcd-3d-printer https://www.creality3dshop.de/collections/3d-printer/product... and "this machine can make stone out of liquid" to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_muoXfXlEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_muoXfXlEg, but I didn't preserve any of the links or images in my translation here. There are several other links in the original text to specific technical resources or details. :-)
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoYeah, you're right. The word translated as 'stone' also can mean 'hard object, metal, rock', and refers here to plastic object - so the 3d printer is somehow a "hard-object device". Doesn't make much sense without the link to a video to provide context! (Welcome to Toki Pona, where often things make no sense out-of-context... ).
- xyproto 7y ago
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoI hadn't come across this translator before. It's pretty fancy!
- owenversteeg 7y agoWow, I started to read that and couldn't understand a word and kept reading and by the end I could understand most of it. Language is so cool!
- aasasd 7y agoJust as I saw the original article, I thought about machine translation. But then I realized that since interpretation of Toki Pona is very context-dependent, it's basically a general-AI task to translate it into normal language.
- butz 7y agoCould someone explain, preferably in English, why keyboard is so strange? Is this an art piece?
- Palomides 7y agothe Toki Pona conlang uses only 14 letters, and has a philosophy of simplicity/minimalism, so this is a tiny computer with a reduced keyboard specifically for the language it's more or less an art piece, yes
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoThe input system is a bit fancier/more obscure than that. Toki Pona uses 14 letters when written with the Latin alphabet (on screen, for those confused, it's displayed as Sitelen Pona, a hieroglyphic writing system for Toki Pona - http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/hieroglyphs.php http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/hieroglyphs.php ). But because there are 120 words in total, you can merge letters without any ambiguity arising (merging 'b' and 'p' in english lets you still distinguish 'bell' from 'potato'). Because there's a closed list of 120 words you can bring this to an extreme of requiring only six input-buttons for the characters (so, e.g. 't', 'o', and 'k' are all on the same button), and the computer can disambiguate. (This approach was inspired by Book Pahlavi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlavi_scripts#Book_Pahlavi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlavi_scripts#Book_Pahlavi ). It's a bit of an art piece, but I also still use it daily for journalling :)
- bravura 7y agoI know you say it was difficult to build and you won’t do it again, but you should consider selling these and sharing the joy with other people who wants to enjoy this language.
- jzwinck 7y agoThank you for sharing. The example of B vs P is interesting, as modern Korean has the same. The airport code for Busan (South Korea) is PUS because there is no practical difference between B and P in Korean. Same with G/K, R/L, and D/T: each pair is interchangeable and has been subject to changing fashion over the years in Gorea.
- sdenton4 7y agoSome context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona Tiki Pona is a constructed language with a vocabulary of about 125 root words, and 14 phonemes (allowing a very economical keyboard, from the looks of it). So presumably, we could read the page with a couple afternoons of practice? I'm curious how long it takes to pick up the language, if anyone can chime in. If it's something you can matter in less than a month it could be amazing...
- yiyus 7y agoI think your assumptions are correct (I haven't learnt it but have read quite a bit about this and other artificial languages). It's very cool! The people who have learnt it talk wonders about it. However, I find it too limited to be practical. For example, it does not have words for numbers, or for left and right. Does anyone knows of some kind of slightly extended version of Toki Pona?
- tomcooks 7y agoChinese. /s
- jan_Inkepa 7y ago>For example, it does not have words for numbers It has two official number systems (described in the official Toki Pona book - https://tokipona.org https://tokipona.org ). They're not practical for big numbers, and they are a bit cumbersome, but they're there. >left and right. I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there. (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them) >Does anyone knows of some kind of slightly extended version of Toki Pona? certain people add/coin words to do certain things, and some people use obsolete/archaic ones, but nothing's caught on generally. More generally think there's a world of minlangs (minimalistic languages), but I don't know much about it, alas.
- jean- 7y ago>> left and right. > I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there. > (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them) Surely the lack of words for left/right would make it pretty cumbersome to describe, say, the vehicle code, or to give driving directions, no?
- dang 7y agoNot a duplicate, but related from 11 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22689959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22689959 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9914534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9914534 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153406 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191186
- schoen 7y agoI made a manual translation of this text into English further down in this thread, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788461.
- rasengan0 7y agolook finish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoToki Pona takes lots of words from Finnish! - http://ucteam.ru/toki-pona/ http://ucteam.ru/toki-pona/
- georgeoliver 7y agoWonderful to see increpare making this. If you've never checked out his other work I highly recommend it.
- tannerbrockwell 7y agoThere is an Anki Deck for the words / meaning / pictographs... [1] I am fascinated that this is a 14 character alphabet. I imagine if a CS major or mathematician made this they would have been strongly inclined to base 16 for instance. This feels a lot like a language version of lisp... [1]: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1548566798 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1548566798
- wccrawford 7y agoPunctuation, 0 (for termination), non-printable characters... having 16 letters stop meaning much in light of all the other characters you'd need anyhow.
- savolai 7y agoI tried two anki apps. The first didnt have file import. Some sort of cloud solution that didn't explain how it was supposed to work. On the second one, import was broken. Recommendations?
- yorwba 7y agoThe official Anki apps are at https://apps.ankiweb.net/ https://apps.ankiweb.net/ Your description doesn't make clear whether you tried to use two of those or some unofficial apps instead.
- savolai 7y agoI wasn’t aware of there being an official anki entity as the concept seems relatively generic.
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoOh, hello! I made this. If you've any questions just shoot :)
- lokl 7y agoIf you share this on r/mechanicalkeyboards, you will be loved.
- savolai 7y agoMy favourite hn comment of all time. Finally, engineering and humanity meet at a sweet spot. (Yes, I’m enjoying this a bit too much.)
- schoen 7y agopali sina li nasa pona kin.
- schoen 7y agotenpo wan la sina weka ike e nimi "e": > "jan li sitelen toki pona kepeken supa nena seme?" taso sina wile sitelen e "jan li sitelen e toki pona kepeken supa nena seme?"
- jan_Inkepa 7y agomi pona e pakala (tenpo kama lili la pakala li kama weka lon lipu mi :) ). pona tawa sina!
- cosarara 7y agoAfter you have typed your text, what options do you have to get it out of the machine? Can it connect to a printer? Save to some permanent storage?
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoI can ssh in and sync (I could get it to sync automatically, but haven't been bothered). Hurrah for R-Pi. [ I was thinking of connecting it to a thermal printer, but honestly I have enough bits of paper lying around my room already... ]
- knolax 7y agoMore like an electronic typewriter. Seems like outside of that one application, all the other software running on the Raspberry Pi is still the standard Linux stack. According to the translation in the other comments, the article likewise only calls it a "writing machine".
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoYeah. I had originally mocked up a command-prompt, scripting language etc., but in the end I realised the only thing I actually wanted to do with it was write, so I focussed on that as my goal :)
- knolax 7y agoThe keycaps are beautiful. What switches did you use?
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoThanks! The base keyboard is a commodity koolertron one-haded keyboard ( https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07WC4YBVY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07WC4YBVY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_... ), and the switches it uses according to the spec manual are OEM Outemu switches (and according to the box red ones :) ).
- sneak 7y agoA conlang designed to be minimal and thus super easy to learn. Why on Earth would one then make a unique character/glyph set? Any conlang that does not fit neatly into 8859-1 is a nonstarter for wide adoption. The “you can write it in latin or in hieroglyphics” aspect of TP seems insane and contradictory to me. That’s the opposite of minimalism.
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoMinimalism is one side, but having fun is another side. Having a small number of words also lends itself a lot to hieroglyphic systems - people love inventing new writing systems (also number systems...) for it.
- sneak 7y agoI think by sticking to latin1, adding directional words and arabic numerals officially, this could stand to be a major global auxiliary language, with all the associated human benefits. Fragmenting the readership and writership with an alternate writing system robs it of that potential, in my view. I like your device and post, fwiw. I just think that languages are a tragic waste if they are not used and learned, and fragmentation harms both of those.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thesuperbigfrog 7y agoBlissymbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols) were created to address such a need. Radiolab has a great episode (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bliss https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bliss) that gives the backstory of the creation of Blissymbols and why they did not get as widely adopted as their creator hoped.
- Cyberdog 7y ago
- tduberne 7y agoVery nice. One question though: as far as I understand, it relies heavily on the fixed-size vocabulary to reduce keyboard size. Is it still able to handle names (of persons, countries...) which are not part of the vocabulary?
- Doxin 7y agoMost languages deal with that problem by simply taking names as they are, sometimes transliterating to fit the alphabet available. It doesn't matter if I'm speaking dutch or english, my name is unchanged. The only wide exception to this tends to be country names which mostly seem to get a global and a local name. There's no real reason to do this when using toki-pona. you could go for constructs like "ma pi suno tewi sewi" which'd translate to "land of the rising sun" or more literally "land of the sun going up" but I fail to see the point. Any toki pona ''native'' would be able to read and pronounce "japan" since all the letters are available in the toki pona alphabet, the pronunciation even matches well enough. If someone doesn't know japan they won't know what "land of the rising sun" refers to and you'd need to reach for more descriptive language in any case. Disclaimer: my grasp of toki pona grammar is tenuous at best, I'm sure there's better translations for "land of the rising sun".
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoThe official Toki Pona book details a procedure for word-borrowing (and also has a suggested list of translated country names). The online the only source is a way more linguistically-flavoured article by the creator of the language, that goes into way more detail than the official book itself: http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/tpize.php http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/tpize.php
- jan_Inkepa 7y agoThere’s a process of transliteration/loaning that you can do if you want to import words from foreign languages. They’re slightly firewalled form the rest of the language (they’re not first-class content words), but because you can talk about a “jan Mewika” for an American, maybe it’s a bit disingenuous to talk about it having just 120 words :P As for how my device supports words not on the list because as you smartly noted it’s optimised to the vocabulary size so how do you add randomo loan words? Thankfully the hieroglyphic display orthography I’m using has the same problem. The solution is to do it nato-alphabet style, and put the loaned word in a cartouche. Which is very labour-intensive to read as well as to write.
- thih9 7y agoOfftopic: I stopped reading an introduction to Toki Pona when I learned that „complicated” also means „bad” or „evil”. How I see it, lots of things can be complicated. Calculus equations. Some emotions. Some recipes. Etc. It’s hard for me to call them bad at the same time. How others are looking at this?
- anorphirith 7y agoIt's all about context, in this context the reader won't read something like calculus as "bad" but rather as "complex" unless your phrase clearly goes towards that direction