Symmetry of the Full Circle

Daniel Noelpp d.noelpp at GMX.CH
Wed Oct 15 20:17:30 UTC 2003


Hello SignWriting friends!

I have discovered  sixteen identical Full Circle symbols in
the SymbolBank. I feel strange and a bit at a loss when
I see this chain of beautiful circles.

Here my idea about them:

How about adding  a tiny mark in a way to make them visually
distinguishable and at the same time make a variation: Only
ONE full circle without marks? Neat, he?

I suppose the 16 full circles are because to keep information.
If we hadn't 16 full circles but only one, we would have a
problem.

Imagine you have a half circle like the fingerspelling O. You
decide that a full circle would be better and you tap the FILL
key to get it. You don't see the orientation of the hand form
anymore.

Let's continue. You decide to undo the operation and tap
the FILL key till you get back the half circle. But the rotation
might not be the same anymore! That's because the program
forgets the rotation if it has only one full circle.

Is this why we have 16 visually identical full circles?

Why is this a problem? Visually equal symbols for different
things are not a good idea. Finding signs with full circles is
difficult because there are 16 rotations. Even if two signs
look equal they aren't!

What do you think?

Daniel



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