Sign Proccessing Software

[Dan Parvaz]

> I like your Navajo writing.....it may be important to someone who writes
> Navajo!

My point -- and I did have one :-) -- was that the two situations were
analogous. If we insist on the meaning of a gloss from a word in the other
language, we might end up with funny-looking terminology.

> that wasn't too complex, that's all...smile...

I certainly see your point.

> And it is fine if you feel it would be more accurate to say: English
> Spoken Language and American Sign Language

I'm not sure why you chose to say that. English is English, and one of the
things it entails is that it is primarily spoken (and sometimes written).
American Sign Language, a name coined by Bill Stokoe (RIP) was a
convenient academic label, which sort of took on a life of its own. The
word used in ASL for the language was always...

http://www.pudl.info/dict/asl/sign.gif

.... which was not coined to match one of our English words.

> the written form for ASL and all the terminology will be meaningless!
> Maybe in a decade?

Perhaps. Russians don't say they're writing in Cyrillic, nor do we write
in "Latin." What that does entail, though, is that a writing system be
adopted as a standard. Still, I prefer "I'm typing out ASL using
SignWriter."

"What's SignWriter, Dan.?"

"Why, it's a word processor for signed langauges."

Call it a sign processor. Call it "Bob." But let's keep developing it :-)

-Dan.