IMWA: Handshape Construction and Sequencing Rules

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 3, 2004

Dear SW List, and Everyone!
These discussions are very valuable and I appreciate all this...I feel
very lucky indeed, to work with so many intelligent people, with so
much insight into different issues...

To help you all, let me give you a short perspective on the purpose of
the IMWA. The IMWA is like a huge closet of symbols...It is a summary
and documentation of all the symbols that existed in the past, from
1974 until 2004. It is an historic record of 30 years work, which not
only includes SignWriting, but also MimeWriting and
DanceWriting...those sections of Sutton Movement Writing use the same
symbols of SignWriting, plus other symbols that SignWriting does not
use, so I am trying to document everything for history's sake, as well
as to get a system that will benefit programming...

In the sound world, this is a little equivalent to music and speech.
Both use sound, but the International Phonetic Alphabet does not have
symbols for recording music...only speech.

But the IMWA is housing symbols for both dance and signed
languages...Dance is to the movement world, what music is, to the sound
world...it is not a language like signed languages are...so the IMWA is
trying to do more than the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)...

Therefore, the IMWA may not be what you want to use for your
programming needs. Instead, for your programming needs, we may need to
create smaller subsets of symbols that are specific to your needs. But
they will share the same numbers of the IMWA...(I mean
01-01-001-01-01-01 when I say numbers!)...

So the Rotation Numbers will be valuable for those who are typing with
SignWriter Java...but maybe in Belgium, other software designs will not
need those Rotation numbers...be we use them in SignWriter DOS, so we
cannot throw them out of the IMWA...

So let me finalize the Symbol Numbers in the IMWA now, and then from
there we can talk about smaller sets of symbols...

Thanks for your patience everyone!

Val ;-)