Just got a call from Rich Gleaves about Lisbon ;-))

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 3, 2004

Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa wrote:
> From my point of view, the fact that SignWriting was not developed in
> the
> academic world, and that most of its users are out of academia is of
> exceeding importance. Academic people tend to be analytic: they tend to
> freeze things, in order to understand them. Being out of academia,
> means for
> SignWriting that it can always be alive, growing, spreading, supporting
> people in their needs, and not only be a subject, or tool, of study. I
> think
> the academic world should look at SignWriting, understand it, use it,
> but
> should let it live in the outer world, as it has lived and grown up to
> now.
> In fact, to me, the true world of SignWriting is the Internet, and
> should
> stay open and wide as the Internet is....


Dear SW List, and Antonio Carlos!
What a great statement, and very true too. SignWriting is used by
masses of people now, writing by hand, who are not on the internet, but
they know SignWriting because other people, who are on the internet,
learned it there, and taught it to them. So there is a world of people
without computers who are using SignWriting because their teachers had
computers...

One of the best decisions we ever made was deciding to post SignWriter
DOS for free to download on the Internet. I thank Rich for his
generosity of spirit. He suggested we do this, and then I followed that
with many web sites with lots of free downloads. And that is how I met
Antonio Carlos...Just a short time after I posted our first web site in
September 1996, Antonio Carlos wrote to me, having visited our web
site...and ever since we have been building a freely-accessed
SignWriting internet community together...so we are a team without
borders ;-)

I hope there will be more academic workshops like the Lisbon workshop?
That will be very healthy for software development -

We can always have relaxed non-academic ones in my home, in La Jolla,
California, if you would like...Of course, in-between visiting the
pacific ocean, we might get something done!

Val ;-)