Dan's SWML suggestion about pasting sign sentences from dictionaries

[Dan Parvaz]

> 1. What are the "grammar ramifications" of pasting signs from a
> dictionary into sentences...?

Nothing, if the sign is suitably modified to ensure grammatical
accuracy. It would still speed up the editing process.

What might be a cause for concern is if Deaf kids get used to typing
out glosses for signs. There is no real correspondence between the two,
and not only will it mess with the kids' competence in signed
languages, you're also going to have issues with spoken languages as
well (isn't the point here to move ~beyond~ "yesterday me car?"). But
that's a pedagogical issue... not a text processing one.

> 2. A second question is the " dependency issues"...if we hook the SWML
> to a specific entry in a dictionary, what will happen if we delete the
> entry from the dictionary later, or if we change dictionaries?

I'm thinking of this purely in terms of SWML. When files gets saved in
native SW format, it should be "flattened," i.e. have all dependencies
resolved and have the actual sign, not the link, in the file.

Or not :-)

-Dan.