Sign Proccessing Software

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

        As Humpty Dumpty said in "Through the Looking Glass," "When I use
a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
However, the mitigating factor is that when you use a word, people take it
to mean what they're used to it meaning.

        In other words, feel free to use "sign processing" to mean what
SignWriter does, but it you use that with computer people, they're likely
to think you're talking about some kind of natural language parser for
sign languages.  If you say "word processing for sign languages" to them,
they'll know what you're talking about.

        This is a negotiation process that goes on in all languages, but
as Humpty Dumpty goes on to say, "The question is, which is to be master -
that's all."  I also like this one: "When I make a word do a lot of work
like that, I always pay it extra."

        Here's the conversation in full:
<http://sundials.org/about/humpty.htm>

        And here's an illustrated version of Through the Looking Glass:
<http://www.bygosh.com/lookingglass/>

                                        -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
                                        Linguistics Department
                                        University of New Mexico
                                        grvsmth at unm.edu
                                        grvsmth at panix.com