SEARCHING FOR SIGNS BY HANDSHAPE

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 2, 2004

Charles Butler wrote:
> The SW001.dic database should also contain a lot of medieval sign 
> language from various sources as well as some Libras, though not all 
> of the original .dic files from Brazil.

Hi Everyone, and Charles!
That is great that you tried the Belgian dictionary database, and I 
hope you can give the programmers feedback:

Steven Aerts
steven.aerts at ua.ac.be

Bart Braem
bart.braem at ua.ac.be

1. Regarding the file that you attached, Charles...Here are some of  my 
thoughts...I suspect it is a little premature to send a dictionary file 
just yet...The Belgian online dictionary is one of the programs 
featured at the software conference in Lisbon in May...and it is just 
being tested right now...So write to the programmers above first, to 
see if they are ready to accept new dictionary files...

2. If you do send to them, be sure to send them two files...not just a 
..dic, but also a file named .din...without both .dic and .din, the 
dictionary is unreadable.

3. Is your dictionary file a mixture of American and Brazilian signs? 
That would be very confusing. The name of the American dictionary file 
is sw001.dic and sw001.din, so you need to have a seperate name for 
your LIBRAS dictionary, so the signs do not get mixed...It may be a lot 
of work to place your dictionary on the web, so before all that work, 
it would be a good idea to have a clean dictionary that is not a blend 
of many signed languages, because on the web, there are visitors from 
all over the world, some who are beginners and will assume that every 
sign in the dictionary is one language...

I hope the Belgian team will forgive me if I have said something wrong 
here...I am trying my best to explain the situation! Meanwhile, I have 
had a peek at the Greek animation program using SignWriting and that is 
also quite amazing!!

Val ;-)