Val's thoughts on Typing in SignWriting

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 31, 2004

Dear SW List, and all the wonderful programmers who are struggling with
the issue of typing in SignWriting....

First, THANK YOU...for focusing on this issue.

Second, I believe we all should be open to different ways of inputting
SignWriting, just as long as we are also aware of the positive and
negative results of each input system. So the glossing idea is great,
just as long as we realize that other input methods exist too, and have
postive but different results...

Third, as new software development expands and explodes around the
world, I am hoping, with the help of Daniel and his hard-working team
in Switzerland...that we can somehow re-construct the typing input
method that Rich Gleaves and I developed years ago...I may be
out-of-date to hope for this, but I also might be helping
SignWriting...because if you really think about it...what is the
strength of typing in English or German or French? We type directly in
the symbols of English, German and French....without pasting whole
words from dictionaries...so that same kind of experience needs to be
developed in the SignWriting world, and I believe we were on our way to
accomplish it....but then it never got taught properly...so the fault
is all mine, for not teaching it correctly in our manuals...

I am writing this because I wanted you all to know that I am happy with
the enormous development that is exploding around us...and I am
supportive of all these new ideas....as an old woman I am looking back
at what we started with, and I don't want to lose that, as we move on
to new frontiers...

So I will try to write down the exact typing techniques and I bet once
you all see these, at first, like any person learning to type, you will
go...oh no!....but then if you keep doing them, you get faster and
faster and faster...and then you start to realize that typing English
is not that easy to learn either, and it really isn't that hard to type
directly in the movements of signed languages...

Val ;-)