Unicode, Pass It On Services, SymbolBank, Future plans

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 23, 2003

On Sunday, June 22, 2003, at 11:02 AM, Stuart Thiessen wrote:
> The name of our new organization will be "Pass It On Services" since 
> the emphasis of our organization will be encouraging deaf people in 
> our community to be lifelong learners and "pass it on" to others 
> around them.  We will have some things that are local in scope and 
> others that are broader such as encouraging literacy with SignWriting, 
> etc.


Dear SW List, and Stuart!
Congratulations on your new Deaf organization...Now I can see why you 
wanted to write the sign "pass-it-on" in ASL in SignWriting - ha! And 
thank you for taking the Unicode issues on your shoulders...I am more 
than glad to "pass-it-on" to the next generation - smile...

Let me give you all an understanding of the schedule here...This week I 
am going to try to finish entering those new symbols you requested into 
SymbolBank...I never finished that job. On Monday, June 30th, Antonio 
Carlos da Rocha Costa and his wife, Graçaliz, will be arriving from 
Brazil. On Tuesday, July 1st, we will have a meeting about SWML and 
SignBank-FileMaker with our FileMaker developer, Todd Duell...plus 
Antonio Carlos is bringing other programming "goodies" which I look 
forward to seeing!

So this week I must finish those symbols, so I can hand Todd and 
Antonio Carlos a better SymbolBank to work with...and I am also adding 
signs to the SignBank US dictionary. I am transferring signs from the 
SignWriter Java dictionary, into SignBank. Those signs in SignWriter 
were typed by three native ASL signers back in the mid-1990's and I 
feel, since that is a dictionary we already have in SignWriter DOS, 
that it would be great to have the exact dictionary in SignBank 
too...so we can sort by SSS and also do sophisticated searches...but 
that is a big task - I am only entering around 20 signs a day and there 
are 3,000! But I cannot go faster, since I am juggling about 6 other 
jobs daily...

Once the programming meeting on July 1st is concluded, I hope to focus 
on doing web postings for Malta and Switzerland, answering spelling 
questions, and creating a lovely documentary on the Albuquerque 
Literacy Project. Dr. Cecilia Flood has written the first dissertation 
in the US on SignWriting in Deaf Education, and that dissertation needs 
to be presented properly to the general public. Cecilia also told me 
that she has literature written by her Deaf students that needs to be 
posted...

And then there are the magnificent publications in Nicaragua - every 
month or so I seem to receive a new book in SignWriting in Nicaraguan 
Sign Language - thank you James! And all of this wonderful literature 
could be saved in a database, and I hope in time to do that, so that 
the rest of the world can read your work, and not just me -

That is my summary - If for any reason I am not online that much this 
week, please know it is a tight schedule, but I look forward to more 
communication later this summer -

Val ;-)


Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org

1. SignWritingSite
http://www.SignWriting.org
Read & Write Sign Languages

2. SignBankSite
http://www.SignBank.org
Sign Language Dictionaries

3. DanceWritingSite
http://www.DanceWriting.org
Read & Write Dance

4. MovementWritingSite
http://www.MovementWriting.org
Read & Write Movement & Gesture

5. Shop Online!
http://www.SuttonShop.com
Proceeds Donated to Deaf Literacy

Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting
Center For Sutton Movement Writing
an educational nonprofit organization
Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA
tel: 858-456-0098....fax: 858-456-0020
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