Terminology "swim lanes"

[Bill Reese]

I was wondering how you expand upon the concept to include more than 2 or 3 people.  Let's say you have two people on the left and a person on the right.  How would you distinguish between the two people on the left?  When I sign, I would show a small separation between them.  Conceivably, I could be talking about 10 different people and giving each their own descriptive space.  Is it possible, then, to have 10 separate positions in vertical column layouts?  Additionally, these 10 separate places in space could have vertical components - for instance, if one of the people were on a mountain, or a ladder.  This, then would require horizontal "lanes" in a sign, whether it's written horizontal or vertical.  The interesection of vertical and horizontal "lanes" then becomes a set of areas more dependent on the centroid of the signing space rather than the orientation of the signs to one another.

The poetic nature of columnar sign writing does not change with such a concept.  That would still hold true.  It's simply that the concept of a couple "lanes" seems to restrict the descriptive spaces available in a sign.

Bill


----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Butler <chazzer3332000 at YAHOO.COM>
Date: Friday, June 18, 2004 12:22 pm
Subject: Re: Terminology "swim lanes"

> On terminology:
>
> I like "swim lanes".  A keystroke, like a breast-stroke" goes into
> a proper motion lane.  It implies motion and dance.  Definitely
> keep the "lanes", how about "motion lanes", people understand
> keeping in a lane of traffic.  Sign lane would definitely work but
> motion lane helps people understand why SW is written vertically.
>
> So, for example,
>
> "Always keep your signwriting properly centered in the motion
> lane, moving outward from the center line.  In this way you can
> show relative locations, particularly when placing classifier
> markers, as in showing several people in conversation or setting
> up a description space (like putting up bookshelves)."
>
> Charles
>
>
> Valerie Sutton <sutton at SIGNWRITING.ORG> wrote:
> SignWriting List
> June 18, 2004
>
> Stephen Slevinski wrote:
> > I thought I would play a bit with the PUDL site and try to implement
> > gloss
> > translation with swim lanes. My dictionary still doesn't center the
> > head in
> > the middle of the swim lanes, but my next dictionary will.
>
>
> Smile...Shall we establish some new terminology? Let's not call them
> swim lanes...What about Sign Lanes (grin) or SW Lanes or Width Lanes,
> or Spatial Comparison Lanes....you can see how new terminology gets
> re-defined daily!
>
> > So attached is the translation of "there_2 your >dog."
>
> OK. Let me re-write this, by typing it in SignWriter Java, showing you
> how I would do that...keystrokes and all!....
>
> Here is Stephen's example and mine will be coming next...
>
>
>
>
>
> > ATTACHMENT part 2 image/gif x-unix-mode=0644; name=example.GIF
>