SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: Symmetry of the Circle Hand

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
October 16, 2003

Daniel Noelpp wrote:
> No I am talking about the O hand form....

Dear SW List and Daniel!
Smile...because you called it "Full Circle" in your title of your
original email message, I did not think of the "Circle" handshape. So I
guess I will need to add the word "hand", so that it is called "Circle
Hand" in the future...That is why the numbers are more accurate. The
symbol you want to discuss is 01-05-020 (in SSS-2002 and
SSS-2004)...Please see the attached GIF...

List members....Daniel is trying to program SignWriter Java, and there
are some small glitches that exist in all computer programs using
SignWriting, not because the past programming is bad...not at
all!...the programmers have done the best job they could with the
symbols as they are...but because there are a few symbols that do not
show palm facing well...This symbol....the Circle Hand...is one of
them. Take a look at the diagram...The Fill Numbers going across the
top of the grid...those show "Palm Facing"..Look at Fill 01 and Fill
03. Can you see how the Circle Hand does not show you visually, what
it's palm facing is? Because the plain white circle and the plain black
circle look the same, no matter what the rotation...you cannot see the
difference between different angles...This also happens with the plain
white and plain black square...they are two symbols that do not show
palm facing very well, and when we read documents it doesn't seem to
matter that much, because signers read from "context"...but from a
typing perspective, the white and black circle symbols are lacking
information in 01 and 03 Fills....So from Daniel's perspective, he
noticed this problem, and is asking what to do about it when he
programs SignWriter Java....We have been having these conversations
like this for days now with around 8 programmers  - I have opened it to
the SW List now, because it is easier, than having two Lists... more
soon...


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