[sw-l] left-handed or right-handed?

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
December 7, 2004

Hello Sandy and Everyone -
Thanks for this explanation, Sandy, and rather than trying to explain
SWML to me, when I am not a programmer, why not create your own
software and try to place this idea into reality? Every software
development project has limitations, and every project that gets
started with a simple plan always becomes more complicated and takes
longer than people expect...at least that is my experience over 30
years of work...So to get other programmers to add this feature to
their already very long list of features, can be overwhelming for
them...And that can be frustrating for you...waiting for them...

So why not develop your own software? Then later, if the feature is
clearly useful, other programmers can incoporate it into their existing
software...

Just a thought! Thanks for all your ideas - I have to move on to help
people read and write SignWriting, and to go back to my IMWA work...

Val ;-)

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On Dec 7, 2004, at 12:29 AM, Sandy Fleming wrote:

> Hi Val,
>
>> Although I don't read SWML at the moment, I am not sure that I am
>> missing something...Programming variants could be useful for some
>
> U think you are missing something...
>
>> I still want to be able to type directly in SignWriting without the
>> restrictions of pre-defined linguistic variants...like SignWriter DOS
>> or Stephen Slevinski's new MovementWriter program...I personally need
>> flexibility to be able to type unusual movements that no
>> standardization could ever know in advance...like mime and gesture and
>> dance and foreign signed languages I don't know...but your idea of
>> variants would be great for languages that people have already
>> analyzed
>> and know the parameters of...
>
> ...and now I think I understand what it is!  :)
>
> The same thing happened when I tried to explain this originally, and
> Antonio
> Carlos made the same assumption as you're making now - that by
> "variants"
> I'm talking about the properties of individual sign languages. But
> that's
> not what I'm talking about.
>
> Rather, I'm talking about the potential of SWML as it stands for
> expressing
> a large number of variant signs at very little extra cost. It's
> nothing to
> do with the properties of the sign language at all, simply an
> unexploited
> source of expressive power already inherent in SWML.
>
> Having variants in SWML would enable programmers to consider
> introducing the
> parameters of a particular language into their software if they wanted
> (for
> example when writing spellcheckers for a language), but it's not what
> variants is about, it's just one of the many possibilities that they
> open
> up.
>
> I agree wholeheartedly with what you say about having to be able to
> show
> nuances of expression that aren't expressible in current software
> systems,
> but adding variant capabilities to the SWML would enable current
> software to
> incorporate more of this flexibility very easily in programs that do
> rely on
> dictionaries, such as current mailers.
>
> Sandy
>
>