[sw-l] SWML questions and comments

[Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa]

Sandy,

  My half cent on this:

> One of the weaknesses of pulling signs from dictionaries is that many signs
> have a continuous range of meanings. For example the British Sign Language
> sign for 'child' has a usual form where the hand is held at about hip level,
> but the height of the hand may be varied to indicate the age (or at any
> rate, height) of the child. See the attached gif for an illustration of this
> (though the adult sign needs a bit of extra modification so might be best
> expressed as a separate dictionary entry).
>
> Since the SWML contains information about the position of each symbol in the
> sign, would it be possible to apply a transformation which will allow the
> envisaged height of the child to be applied?
>
> Perhaps it would be necessary to add range information to the SWML for this?
> For example, specifying the maximum and minimum heights of the handshape
> symbol. It makes the SWML a little more complicated but maybe it beats
> filling up dictionaries with a multitude of signs to cover all variations of
> each sign.
...

> What do you think? Too far-fetched, food for thought, or a piece of cake?

   Not far-fetched, a real piece of cake!

   Only that it will perhaps be another level of abstraction than that
at which SWML is operating at the moment. Currently, it is operating at
the level of the graphical representation of the signs, as a simple
translation of the numerical description of the SignWrirint picture.

   Adding information like the possible range of values seems to me to
go beyond that very low level of description. It brings information that
concerns things outside the scope of the visual representation of a
(standard) way of making a sign.

   It goes into semantical and pragmatical issues. To me, this would
mean a new level of operation for SWML. Let as name SWML Level 0 the
current level. Other SWML levels would have to be defined: SWML Level 1,
SWML Level 2, etc., according to the complexity of the issues that are
added to the representation of the sign, going beyond the representation
at the basic level.

   Perhaps the information you are considering should be the information
that defines SWML Level 1. Perhaps there are other more fundamental
information that can define SWML Level 1, and the information you
mention be put into Level 2.

   Defining such SWML levels would be very important, I think, for
widening the application of SignWriting to other kinds of software,
besides text editors and simple databases (dictionaries).

   But interesting as it may be, that is certainly a task beyond my
reach. I can try to support anyone interested in trying it, but surely I
cannot go very far along that way.

   All the best,

   Antônio Carlos

--
Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa
Escola de Informática - UCPel