Newkirk or Romanized

[Victor Brown]

This is from a few days back and was under the thread "Names of signed
languages"

"Angus B. Grieve-Smith" wrote:

>         If we had a nice Roman-based transcription system, we could use
> the names that are actually used by the signers of those languages.
> Anyone up for compiling a list of names and transcribing them into Newkirk
> '86?

Two different solutions right off the bat.
1) I think we can do it with Romanized (in the new Unicode this is called
'Latin-1'). We've been talking about it just fine using the Latin character
set. We have been talking about how to best handle the ambiguities, and
whether there needs to be changes, etc. You know all that.

2) More to my new thread for discussion is what if we did all have a Unicode
font (and BTW a Unicode capable email program) with Newkirk, HamNoSys, etc.?
I would venture to say that we would still type things out in English (for the
next few years anyway). But wouldn't it be really great to be able to "show"
each other what we mean with a font that we all shared in the way we share
Arial, Times New Roman, etc.  (I hope there are no Unix, text-based readers
out there. Sorry you wouldn't be able to do this right away.)

I've mentioned earlier that I am tracking the names of the languages mentioned
and the acronyms. This blends in with my other back burner project of using a
sign font. How can the computer "store things" in a way that will allow us to
use the various fonts?

I could be venturing into a non-linguistic area here, but this area, I feel,
needs the input of linguists. After all we know the phonology, grammar, and
semantics that need to be included in the computer.

I'll wait to hear from you all before I go into much more detail of what I've
been thinking about (and others obviously).

Later,
Victor