a SignWriting online dictionary open to many contributors...

[Charles Butler]

Dear friends,

Another difficulty I have in the sign writing online dictionary is that for scholarship purposes, it feels as if one is asking people whose life work depends upon research and actually getting paid to create dictionaries to have no way to show, in an amalgamated dictionary, where the word came from, who first cited it, its background, etc.  It's wonderful to say "x sign" in ASL means "y word" in English, but when? what environment? Gallaudet, California, Rochester.  I have six possible signs for "birthday," all of which come from specific linguistic communities.  The 750 or so signs I have zipped and sent to Valerie and to Rocha were from 2 months research in Brazil, collected from at least 20 users of mostly Rio Grande de Sul varieties of Libras, not Sao Paulo Libras which has many radically different signs, which are in a copywritten form in an encyclopedic dictionary of Sao Paulo-based Libras, not currently available for combined scholarship.  I am happy to help create a common
 research corpus, but expect my research to bear somewhere in the dictionary, "x, y, and z" signs transcribed by Charles Butler and Marianne Stumpf with help from the Deaf Society of Pelotas, the Sign Net Project, and members of FENEIS RS.  I have received personal permission to transcribe and publish the "Handbook of Sexual Behavior" and the "Handbook of Drug-Related Signs" put out by Rochester, but before I load them to the dictionary, I would hope to ensure that each of them are verified by Deaf at Gallaudet (near where I live) so that I am not putting in obsolete or unclear signs.

Charles Butler


Valerie Sutton <sutton at SIGNWRITING.ORG> wrote:
SignWriting List
March 6, 2004

Dear SW List, and Stephen!
Regarding PNG versus GIF...I actually resisted changing from GIF to PNG
for this very reason, because I had sooo many files in GIF already, and
because I knew that PNG was a new format and may not be accepted in
older web browsers...However, we discussed this issue on the SW List
awhile back, and some of the European programmers on our List,
suggested that PNG was better than GIFs for several reasons...first it
has a slightly better graphics quality, second there are no legal
restrictions on it...which apparently is not true for GIF, which is not
free from patents in Europe yet...so for people in Europe, the PNG
format is best...So I started to make PNGs and I like the format. I
believe it will be the replacement for GIF all over the world in time.
Meanwhile, some people with older browsers do have trouble reading
PNGs...and I believe Charles Butler may be one of them..so no format is
a perfect situation no matter what we do...The reason I brought it up,
Stephen, is that I have 650 signs for your dictionary ready to go in
individual PNG files, but I do not want to change them to GIFs now...so
I only asked because I can give them to you if you can accept PNGs and
your dictionary would get fatter faster!...Val ;-)

-----------------------



On Mar 6, 2004, at 12:10 AM, Stephen Slevinski wrote:

> Hey Val,
>
> I will accept alternate file formats in the near future. I'm looking
> at the
> conversion libraries right now.
>
> But which format is better, IMG or PNG? I could change over to PNG if
> there
> are advantages.
>
> -Stephen Slevinski
> www.pudl.info
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SignWriting List [mailto:SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA]On Behalf Of
> Valerie Sutton
> Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 3:06 PM
> To: SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
> Subject: Re: a SignWriting online dictionary open to many
> contributors...
>
>
> SignWriting List
> March 5, 2004
>
> On Mar 5, 2004, at 5:12 PM, Stephen Slevinski wrote:
>> Announcing PUDL's Open Dictionary.
>> Now accepting ASL SignWriting in gif format. Visit
>> www.pudl.info/dictionary/addSign.php to upload directly to PUDL's
>> dictionary. Everything is working. Give it a try. The sign counter is
>> at 362....
>
>
> Dear SW Listers and Stephen!
> Thank you for this wonderful gift...A new SignWriting Online
> Dictionary, that accepts contributions from us!
>
> My first and important question....
>
> 1. Can you make your dictionary accept .PNG format? if so, then I can
> contribute 650 PNGs immediately...smile...Val ;-)
> ---
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