[sw-l] For Programmers

[Stuart Thiessen]

Hey, I just had a thought on the way to work today and thought I would 
run this by all the other programmers on the list.  Have any of you 
thought about the idea of a plugin for IE and Netscape/Mozilla, etc. 
browsers that could display SWML? That plug-in could incorporate TT 
Fonts or graphics depending on what is available to the plug-in. If it 
is written well, the choice of TT or graphics could be an internal issue 
for the plugin depending on whether the fonts are available or the 
graphics are available.

Advantages to this being a proof of concept program:

- minimal user input: I think you could set it up so that the user only 
indicates the height, width, maybe scroll bar options, and maybe 
location on the page (or let the <DIV> markup with CSS take care of most 
placement issues). Because there is minimal input, you can focus totally 
on display issues.

- ability to utilize the web medium more effectively to promote 
SignWriting: The more versatile it is to add information to the web, the 
better off we are. Having a plug-in may also allow us to "wrap" the 
Signwriting or even have the option of displaying horizontally or 
vertically (depending on how smart that plugin is.)

- ability to leverage existing tools in the short term: While we are 
waiting for SW Tiger or any of the other projects, we can at least use 
the web more effectivelly and even print from the web if need be.

There may be other benefits that I could think of if I gave it some more 
thought. On the other hand, I am not a plugin programmer so I am not 
100% sure what other issues would be involved with writing a plugin for 
IE or Netscape/Mozilla/etc.

Just a thought.  Maybe this could be a way to utilize Unicode and SW in 
a proof of concept program.

Thanks,

Stuart


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