Functionality needed to open up the SignWriting dictionaries

[GerardM]

Hoi,
There was a question on how to open up the SignWriting dictionaries for
people who do not know the spoken languages that dominates the environment
of the spoken world surrounding a signing community.

A dictionary without a definition is not really reliable, consider for
instance the word jaguar, it is an animal, an automotive brand, two types of
fighter jet, a protein of a fruitfly... You really need a definition because
otherwise homonyms are a problem that you have not addressed.

OmegaWiki is the project that I am particularly involved in. One of the
functionalities we hope to develop is linking a tags to pictures and have
them show the word for a particular concept in the language of the user.
This functionality would be particularly aimed at Wikimedia Commons, the
repository of digital material like images and sound files of the Wikimedia
Foundation. The idea is that when a word is not available in the target
language, the word would be shown in English as English is the lingua franca
of this modern time.

Now when we have developed this functionality to be used in another project,
it might be possible to associate the individual pictures of the signing
dictionaries in OmegaWiki with the concepts or the "DefinedMeanings" of
OmegaWiki. It would allow for people to find the translations in sign
languages. Given the concept, it would be possible to find the equivalent
signs in other sign languages. Better still would be if we had a way to find
signs in OmegaWiki.

You may understand that I am thinking of the things we could do if we had
the resources to  make this happen.

   - Connecting pictures in OmegaWiki to a DefinedMeaning is doable.. It
   needs some minor programming
      - This would be a hack because Unicode would be the obvious
      solution..
      - Getting the tagging for Commons to work has been understood to
   be a 25K Euro project
   - When the issues are solved for Commons, programming this for the
   signlanguage dictionaries should be more easy
   - Getting the search algorithm in MediaWiki for SignWriting (=
   SignBank) might be an opportunity.. No clue about the feasibility

Thanks,
    GerardM

PS I am on a ration of one hour SignWriting a day .. that is why I only now
react :)
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