[sw-l] Hi, I have some questions...

[Barbara Pennacchi]

Hi to everybody,
I'm Barbara, a Deaf technician, currently working with other Deaf people  
in Rome (Italy) in a small project to learn SignWriting and then to start  
using it for transcribing signed narratives.

Then the project took a life on its own. As Valerie Sutton may know, there  
is a translation in Italian of her original SW manual (made as a degree  
thesis by an italian student), but the examples in it were still in ASL  
language. Now, my group's looking for Italian Sign Language examples...

Uhmmm... "looking" is slightly wrong... :-) Well, while they're looking  
for examples, they're also arguing, discussing, bouncing back and forth  
ideas, opinions. I just listen, think and sometimes chime in :-)

During the discussion two totally unrelated things went up (well, it's  
three not two).

First, the less technical thing:

In the handshape symbols, which (as far as I've understood) include in it  
also references to its orientation, there are some groups of symbols that  
represent the "same" handshape, but with two different symbols. One  
example is in "b_hands.gif", as attached here.

What I'm trying to say, if there are multiple "graphemes" for only one  
actual "handshape+orientation", how do we use these different symbols? Is  
there a consensus on their usage? Some rules of usage?

Some of us (and even I) tend to think that the first symbol should used in  
those cases we actually can see the palm of the hand (thus almost in front  
of our face), while the other should be used when the hand/s are set quite  
a lot lower than our face.

But we don't want to re-invent once again hot water, so I tried first to  
search in your website, but the fact that it has in it a lot of PDF files  
and of web pages made mostly of images (containing text in it!) didn't  
help pretty much. Then I tried to search in your mailing list'archives but  
the only mirror that has a decent search engine works woefully slowly....

So, forgive me if I'm asking questions that you already asked and answered  
over and over :-)

Now to the more technical things:

1) SignWriter Java and its successor... what kind of software license do  
they have? I ask this, because we have some colleagues that are interested  
in it and would really like to contribute. Is there a mailing list  
reserved to us "geeks"? And, uh, where can I find a detailed list of bugs  
related to SignWriter Java?

3) from what I've seen in my web-wandering, I've got the sensation that  
any development concerning SignWriter Java, SignWriter Tiger and SW-Edit  
is either "frozen" or done "behind the scenes". Am I wrong, I hope?

3a) FYI, I can't find SignPost nor Sandy Fleming anywhere on the web with  
Google. I get totally unrelated hits. Groan.

4) did somebody manage to run SignWriter Java under linux? (Gnome or KDE  
or any other windowmanager...)

I know, I know, *now* I know: the real juice is there, in the mailing  
list.

The problem is that searching in its archives is a pain in the (ahem) A.  
as I said before. Especially if the only (sllllllowly)searchable mailing  
list archive is also an archive that junks away embedded images. %-P

I hope you didn't have any problems in understanding my ramblings. If  
something isn't clear, feel free to ask. :)

best regards,
b.

P.S.: please forgive me if I'm a bit ticked off by all this *@!# web- 
wandering. I'd rather wander in a wildlife park in summer, thanks. :)

-- 
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Barbara Pennacchi               barbara.pennacchi (at) istc.cnr.it |
|                 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche                 |
|         Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione          |
|                  V.le Marx 15, 00137 Roma, Italia                  |
|                      http://www.istc.cnr.it/                       |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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