New SignBank Features added...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
October 5, 2003

On Saturday, October 4, 2003, at 02:02 PM, Angus B. Grieve-Smith wrote:
> This is very exciting, Valerie!  I believe it is the first
> opportunity to create monolingual sign language dictionaries (unless a
> character-based writing system is used), as you say.  Is the idea that
> the
> author would write the definition in SignWriter, then export to a
> graphics
> file, and paste the graphics file into SignBank?


Dear SW List, and Angus!
Thank you, Angus, for commenting on my message about our new features
in SignBank. I am grateful to you, because your opinion means a lot to
me, and because I need the feedback too...SignBank has been quite a lot
of work for me to design, and my money has run out, so these new
features will be the last new features for several years...We have an
enormous job ahead of us, to add the data to the database anyway...so
it will take time before we really know what will work for signers
around the world...

So since I have your attention, Angus, let me explain in more
detail...Todd, our programmer, gave us seven flexible text fields, and
three flexible graphics containers...At the moment, SignBank sees all
SignWriting entries as "graphics"...So to answer your
question...YES...We would have to type the SignDefinition in SignWriter
Java, hopefully going down in a vertical column. Then create a GIF of
the whole sentence from SignWriter Java, and then paste that GIF into
one of the "graphics containers" (see the columns that say SignSentence
or Illustration in the attached GIF...those can be renamed to be
SignDefinition or any other graphic we choose)...Once we do that with a
whole bunch of SignEntries, we can then print in several print
formats...which I will show you in the next message....Fortunately, I
am skilled enough with FileMaker now myself, that I can change the look
of layouts with no problem, without having to hire a programmer, so we
can make many different ways of viewing these definitions in the
future...the format for a Sign-to-Sign dictionary is an intriguing
challenge...I would love your advice on that...more soon...Val ;-)



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