Thanks for the questions. I have been travelling for work so I haven't had a chance to check responses to my email until now. :) I arrive home tonight. I will reply with answers to your questions and other questions in this thread.<div>
<br></div><div>Let me say this much and then I'll respond more specifically later. My goal for the thesis was to provide an analysis of the symbols based on the symbols themselves and then look for predictable rules that can help us develop rules that a computer can use to predict placement. Where possible, predicted placement can help us have more predictable spellings and less variations. I did want to talk more in detail about placement issues, but I did not have time because I needed to describe each symbol category in depth first. My last 2 chapters deal with placement questions. The research I was able to do gives me some ideas on how placement could be handled, but I would need more time to develop that.<div>
<br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div><br></div><div>Stuart<br><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Bill Reese <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wreese01@tampabay.rr.com">wreese01@tampabay.rr.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
Great! I'm glad they're working together on it. I hope great
things come out of the collaboration.<br>
<br>
I know I brought this up before but I'm wondering, Stuart, if a
concept of relative coordinate systems was discussed in your thesis?
I did a quick scan so I'm not sure if it was. What I mean by
"relative" is a coordinate system that's related to a previous
symbol in a sign according to that sign's signspelling sequence. <br>
<br>
The coordinate for the first symbol would be in absolute coordinates
according to the signbox, then the second symbol would relate to the
first symbol according to a coordinate system using a point of the
first symbol as the origin. <br>
<br>
Doing it that way may allow establishing matrices of symbol pairing
in a sign. I would imagine this to be similar to "kerning" and
possibly define distances according to the pairs rotation of not
only themselves but to each other. Similar to what you were saying
about establishing minimum distances. <br>
<br>
About the overlap of symbols that you mention. I was wondering if
it couldn't also be solved by a matrix of symbol pairing so that a
particular matrix value would indicate overlap - say, a value of
-1. On the other hand, do you think it would be possible to create
totally different symbols that are overlaps of two symbols? I ask
this as that's what's done in other languages when there's an
overlap. For instance, "æ" which looks like "a" and "e" overlapped
but is it's own symbol. I would hazard a guess that separate
symbols are only possible when there's only a few.<br><font color="#888888">
<br>
Bill</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/9/2011 1:06 PM, Valerie Sutton wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">SignWriting List
<div>May 9, 2011</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hello Bill -</div>
<div>Just want you to know that we have a group of
Unicode-knowledgeable people working together on our SignWriting
proposals that will be presented to the Unicode-related meetings
over a period of years, and Steve and Stuart are both in the
group, along with others as well - so we are all working
together...The proposals have been separated into proposing the
encoding of the symbols, or characters, first, (of the
International SignWriting Alphabet 2010) and then once the
symbols have been encoded, we will present a second proposal
related to layout and symbol placement issues - so that second
area is where different theories will be discussed until we can
come up with a final decision for a second proposal - so we are
taking this one step at at a time...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>An exciting time for all of us - smile - </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Val ;-)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>----------</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On May 9, 2011, at 8:56 AM, Bill Reese wrote:</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Stuart,<br>
<br>
Wow, that was a lot of work! I do have one question. How
would the most recent work in Unicode and, more
particularly, what Steve Slevinski has written to the list
affect the portion where you talk about what may be needed
for successful Unicode acceptance? From what it appears,
it's well on it's way to acceptance with what Steve and
Michael Everson have done.<br>
<br>
Bill<br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/8/2011 1:02 AM, Stuart Thiessen wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">Hello, all! I know it's been a long time, no
see. I wanted to let you know that I have completed my
MA thesis on SignWriting. For those of you interested in
reading it, you can download a PDF from the University
website. Just so you know, the PDF itself is about
22MB.
<div> <br>
</div>
<div><u><a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/linguistics/theses/2011Thiessen.htm" target="_blank">http://www.und.edu/dept/linguistics/theses/2011Thiessen.htm</a></u></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If you have any questions about it, just let me
know.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Stuart</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>