<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">SignWriting List<div>December 6, 2008</div><div><br></div><div>Dear SignWriting List!</div><div><br></div><div>Announcing a new 2009 project....</div><div><br></div><div>SignWriting Literature Archives</div><div>Writing World Literature in the Sign Languages of the World</div><div><br></div><div>In 2009, SignWriting will be 35 years old. The first document written was in 1974 in Denmark.</div><div><br></div><div>Last year at this time, Steve Slevinski and I made it our goal, in 2008, to complete and officially start using the International SignWriting Alphabet (ISWA 2008) in current software, and to develop new software using the ISWA 2008. We have succeeded with this goal. I still have new books to write to teach the ISWA, and Steve still is working on new software, such as the SignWriting MediaWiki Plugin, which is in Alpha right now, but the goal of using the ISWA 2008 by the end of 2008 has been accomplished. Thank you, Steve, for creating the IMWA to ISWA conversion program, which was seamless, making this possible!</div><div><br></div><div>With the ISWA installed in SignPuddle, we now have some Ethiopian handshapes, and other new handshapes, that others have requested over many years. This means that we hopefully can start writing some Ethiopian Sign Language Literature, and hopefully most of the handshapes needed will be there...although I realize that there will always be new handshapes needed that we could not foresee....</div><div><br></div><div>Therefore I am keeping a list of new requests, and maybe in four years or so, we can add the requests...but not for a long time, because I believe we can "construct" any new handshapes that are needed, and I am hoping that the ISWA has enough handshapes that other countries can start writing literature too...</div><div><br></div><div>So my goal, for 2009, is to collect and publish as many SignWriting documents as possible, both old and new, written by hand, or by any computer program, and place them in a new internet Archive called the "SignWriting Literature Archive (SWLA)". I am going to start a homepage now, for the SignWriting Literature Archive that will make it possible to search for SignWriting documents by country, by name of the sign language, by the document title, by the document date, by the name of the author, by the name of the software used to create the document, and by the format for downloading and reading the document online...</div><div><br></div><div>It is my hope, by the end of 2009, that we will have a huge archive of SignWriting documents easily accessible by anyone on the internet....</div><div><br></div><div>Several days ago, I had a great conversation with Steve and Dianne Parkhurst in Spain, on Skype....Steve and Dianne gave us permission to scan in old documents, dictionaries and literature in SignWriting from Spain, including Steve's mystery novel, plus we also have permission to provide another version of those documents written in SignPuddle in vertical columns, so the Spanish Sign Language documents will have two versions available in the SignWriting Literature Archives...the original historic document, and the newly entered document in SignPuddle. Thank you, Steve and Dianne, for this....I am hoping by the end of 2009 to have a long list of Spanish documents available on the web...preserving your work spanning over decades.</div><div><br></div><div>And I would also like to do the same for all other countries and authors who have written SignWriting documents in the past or present, whether they were written in SignWriter DOS, SignWriter Java, SWEdit, SignPuddle...or by hand...any version is historic and should be documented and preserved in the SW Literature Archives.</div><div><br></div><div>So I hope writers here on the SignWriting List will contact me with permission to place your documents in the new SignWriting Literature Archives in 2009...It will be a slow process, to get them all cataloged and available, but well worth the effort...</div><div><br></div><div>So I look forward to receiving information from writers, as to the names and lists of their documents...</div><div><br></div><div>If you give us permission to place your documents in the SignWriting Literature Archives, you are welcome to post the names of the documents here on the SW List, and slowly I will contact you and make arrangements to receive copies of the documents to place them in the Archives...</div><div><br></div><div>2009 will be a rich year of literature preserved around the world...I look forward to hearing from all of you...</div><div><br></div><div>Have a great weekend everyone!</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">Val ;-)</span></div><div apple-content-edited="true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; min-height: 14px; "><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; ">Valerie Sutton</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 240); "><span style="text-decoration: underline; "><a href="mailto:Sutton@SignWriting.org">Sutton@SignWriting.org</a></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; ">SignWriting Literature Project</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; ">Writing Literature in Sign Languages</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 240); "><span style="text-decoration: underline; "><a href="http://www.SignWriting.org/literature">http://www.SignWriting.org/literature</a></span></div></div></div></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></body></html>