Sign Proccessing Software

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 15, 2004

Stuart Thiessen wrote:
> For present use, I still see the need for a "SignWriting Inserter"
> that can allow us to compose a sign and then send it to a specific
> program or even to the clipboard as a graphic image. That would be
> very helpful for mixed language documents. Perhaps even a dictionary
> could be included with such a program.

You are right, that would be a great feature from the SignWriter
Computer Program. At present, different dictionary programs outside of
SignWriter do have these features...for example, SignBank, PUDL, the
Flemish Dictionary and other programs can copy a sign to the clipboard,
and then you can paste them into documents...plus from SignBank, and
perhaps others, you can Drag and Drop a sign from SignBank into
Microsoft Word...

But that is not typing the sign...right now we are limited to typing
the sign in SignWriter and then moving it into SignBank later...Once it
is in SignBank, then this drag and drop feature becomes useful...


> One handy feature is the ability to copy and paste between documents.
> Another one would be the ability for scanning the document and seeing
> if there are any similar but different signs .... perhaps with the
> ability to add that sign if not already in the dictionary. For
> example, maybe I use the wrong handshape or brush vs. rub, or
> whatever.  Maybe that would be a way to help edit for the computer to
> say, "I don't see that sign but I have something similar." I believe
> Antonio wrote a paper on the searching concept with SWML.

The GET Command, in SignWriter DOS, makes it possible to copy whole
sentences or sections of a SGN document and then paste it into another
SGN document...so within SignWriter's environment, that can be done
right now...

Yes. Antonio Carlos's paper is important regarding this. Plus the
search feature in SignBank called "Best-Guess SignSpellings" tries to
solve this, although it hasn't really been tested yet, because we don't
have enough signs in SignBank to test it with!


>
>> What projects do you have your eye on for the future?
>
> I'm still musing on this question. When I get a copy of the
> proceedings from the conference in Lisbon, I want to read through it
> and get an idea of what is already being done to see where technology
> is going right now and maybe where it is heading at the moment.

You can download a copy of the proceedings right now, but don't
distribute it to anyone else...Here is the link from Antonio Carlos:

http://gmc.ucpel.tche.br/lisbon-workshop

7Mbytes

Val ;-)