report form the Lisbon workshop

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 4, 2004

SW List Members, and Antonio Carlos!
Thank you for this excellent report on the Lisbon workshop...


Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa wrote:
> Finally I'm at home, again. Sorry for writing to the list on the Lisbon
> workshop only now.

This report came very quickly! No apologies necessary...Traveling home
is time consuming...not as fast as the internet - ha! Too bad we can't
send our bodies through cyberspace -smile...It would put the airlines
out of business - ha!



> The galleries of pictures of the workshop are all great! It was
> wonderful to meet everybody there personally: Richard Gleaves, Ingvild
> Roald, Steve Parkhurst, Steven and Bart, Nikos Gramalidis, Guylhem
> Aznar,
> Thomas Hanke, and many others that I haven't contacted before, not to
> mention Oliver Streiter and Chiara Vettori, the organizers of the
> workshop
> and editors of the proceedings.

An esteemed group! I understand that Steve Parkhurst interpreted in
Spanish Sign Language for the conference? Ironically, Steve Parkhurst
is the author of a popular book on SignWriting...SignoEscritura....and
could have presented a paper on his SignWriting work too:

SignWriting in Spain
http://www.SignWriting.org/spain/spain.html

but instead interpreted this time...a multi-talented person!...That was
great he was there...



> The workshop was a wonderful meeting. The various approaches to sign
> language processing were all presented, specially the two main ones
> SignWriting and HamNoSys.
>
>     The invited talks were excelent. Richard gave a perfect historical
> talk
> on SignWriter. Thomas Hanke gave a short tutorial of HamNoSys, and
> Carol
> Neidl and  Robert Lee explained their very important SignStream
> annotation
> system, an important tool for sign language researchers.

Years ago, Carol Neidle and I talked about adding a section in
SignStream for SignWriting text, as a graphic insert in their
user-interface. I don't believe they did it, but I could suggest it
again to them, if there are users on our List who would like to use
SignStream...SignStream is on the web:
http://www.bu.edu/asllrp/SignStream/


>  The work going on on sign language synthesis in the Nikos' group
> (based
> on SignWriting) and in the ViSiCast Project (based on HamNoSys) look
> very
> promissing. The ViSiCast project seems to emphasize the realistic
> production
> of signs (so they make heavy use of motion capture), while Nikos' work
> emphasizes interactivity, and is great on it.

Wonderful! I have enjoyed using the animation interface on the web,
developed by the Nikos group from Greece...It is an interesting
application of SignWriting symbols, to use them to animate a
figure...big job but it obviously can be done...


> Patrice Dalle (Guylhem's advisor) is a well known French researcher in
> vision systems. He demonstrated the software he is developing for sign
> language recognition from images captured by video cameras. Really
> impressive! He is well on the way to produce automatic annotations for
> visual aspects of signs and sign phrases.

I hadn't realized that Professor Dalle worked on this. I look forward
to reading his paper. Perhaps SignWriting could be coupled with his
images someday...

Back in 1999-2000, it was Professor Dalle who communicated with me
about the donations of SignWriting materials to a school for the Deaf
in France. You can read our communication on the web. Go to our web
site, and open the Search section. Search for Patrice Dalle...you will
find a long listing...here are two...


SignWriting in France
.... Director: Mr. Patrice Dalle Patrice...
  www.signwriting.org/france/france.html

SignWriting List Forum
....School's Name: IRIS School for the Deaf
  www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/ archive2/message/2639.html


It is great to know that Guylhem will now continue work with
SignWriting in France, with Professor Dalle...



> The issue of SWML and Unicode for SignWriting arouse in many occasions
> in oral presentations and poster sessions. My personal feeling, from
> all the
> discussions (and also from the track that appeared here in the last few
> days) is that one should further the Unicode for SignWriting issue, to
> get a
> clearer idea of its potential. SWML and Unicode are not alternatives,
> they
> are complementary, and it is important to understand clearly how we can
> profit the best from both.

I agree with you on this. Just as there is no competition between
SignWriting and HamNoSys, there is no competition between SWML and
Unicode....These are all tools that are useful for different
purposes...and it is good for the world to have multiple choices, that
can complement each other...It is a little like comparing airplanes
with automobiles...they are both transportation, but are useful at
different times, depending on the circumstances...

When I was working with Unicode specialist Michael Everson, years ago,
Michael told me that there would be no problem to place SignWriting
into Unicode, but there were three issues...The first is funding to
develop all the TrueType fonts for the huge symbolset...that is a big
task and unfortunately the first obstacle. The second is the politics
with the world standards...That has already been somewhat solved, since
Michael has already gotten written acceptance for a SignWriting Unicode
standard from the ISO (an international organization that sets world
standards)...hopefully, even though it has been several years now,
since we received that, the door will still be open when someone
finally works officially on Unicode. Once the first and second phases
are finished, there is a third phase...The programming of how the
TrueType fonts would work, to make it possible to type SignWriting with
them as efficiently as we do in SignWriter DOS...or maybe even better
that SignWriter DOS. I know that most people do not realize that we can
type directly in SignWriting, but we can if you know how to do it, and
getting Unicode to function on that level will need some programming. I
believe that Guylhem's paper is about an idea for Unicode
implementation...and there are other ideas too...People seem genuinely
interested in the programming aspects in step three...But it is
completing step one that scares me ---There are a lot of symbols to put
into TrueType!

Meanwhile, back in the SignWriting world right now, we need SWML and
SignWriter DOS-Java typing methods...It is what we have right now and
what works for us right now...and there is no guarantee that Unicode
will be better...The TrueType fonts have to become a reality first,
before we will know!


> Guylhem Aznar will be visting me next week (he is at the moment in
> Porto
> Alegre, with Marianne Stumpf). I hope to talk a little bit more with
> him
> abouth the Unicode stuff.

Wonderful!!

> Also, it is important to understand that SignWriting and HamNoSys are
> not alternatives for the same purpose. They are complementary, useful
> for
> different purposes, and to get a clear picture of such complementarity
> is
> also important, for the best profit of the development of sign language
> processing systems.

How true!

> In summary, everybody enjoyed the workshop. Looks it will be useful to
> organize another one next year. Oliver and I are already talking about
> that.

This is wonderful news! We are all benefiting from your efforts. Thank
you for arranging these workshops, and for writing this report to the
SignWriting List!

Please send my best wishes to Guylhem and Marianne!

Val ;-)