AW: [sw-l] Frustrations of SignWriter DOS users...

[Stefan Woehrmann]

Hi Sandy and listmembers,

thanks a lot for your time and interest to reply to my message -

(nevertheless SW DOS has been more worth than gold to me!!!! ) smile

Well - obviously there are quite a number of different goals people try to
achieve with the support of SW.

>From my point of view  - as a teacher of deaf students who is very much
interested to offer materials and learning methods to improve literacy,
communication competence, knowledge about both language-systems ( SL  and
Spoken Language) the SW - DOS program is exactly what I was looking for!!

Especially the chance to collect as many spelling-variations as you love to
in the dictionary and to browse through the dictionary in order to find a
sign.  I would not say that another search routine - look up a sign by
handshape, contact-symbol, movement-arrow .....  would not be helpful -

But since I observe day by day my deaf students looking up the meaning or
spelling of words - just by typing the first few letters ...

You do not have to worry that there will develop a kind of lazy attitude
among the dictionary - users. Even my youngest students develop some kind of
expectation what kind of spelling they are looking for. And if you are
skilled enough in SL that you understand that eyebrows down would cause
misunderstanding - there is no problem to change that very quickly.

No I do not think that speeding up is a major interest from my point of
view. So far I  am not able to transcribe even 3 signs in a sequence exactly
without looking at the still again, and again and again.
If it comes down to write my own letters to friends in SW - well you are
right that the dictionary cannot store all these tiny or funny or important
variations that I would like to add in order to give my writing a specific
personal note.

But if I try to find concepts for question and answer. If I try to show a
collection of verbs, nouns or sign names - If I try to transcribe a spoken
Dialogue in signs (signed German LBG) it is very, very helpful to be able to
find hundreds and thousands of entries in order to broaden the vocabulary
for both systems.

In Germany there are is a collection of CDs and videos and SL- Dictionaries
with thousands of entries - but the moment you are in need of a special
sign - there is almost no way to have  a quick access.

This is different to the SW - Dos - dictionary. wonderful (smile)

Unfortunately I have to erase one sign in the first section A - M , because
the software-programming does not allow one additional entry.  This is not
fun! Look at my face - it takes time to make my decision which other entry
should be erased in order to get space for the new - "important" one.

Browsing through some of your messages I understand that your brain and
hands are accustomed to find any key in the dark (smile) . Whenever I get
the chance to look at software programmers I feel dizzy at what speed they
are able to type and to handle a couple of screen-windows at the same time.

When I started to learn to type with Sign Writer years ago it took
sooooooooo long to create the first few dictionary entries. I thought of the
Egyptian scribes or other people who worked with hammer on stone ...

>From my point of view we need very much an ongoing discussion about how to
write movements.

This is not as easy as many people may think of. In fact reading is very
easy. (And reading your own documents after a short period of time is very
easy)
But if you ask your reader to translate your message - that is what I ask my
students to do - you have to be literate in both systems. To find the
adequate translation your SW-spelling has to be as clear as possible in
order to cut out too many alternative meanings.

So it is wonderful that some people are skilled in the area of programming
in order to support the needs of SW-enthusiast who do not want to miss a
computer based writing system for movements.
It would be great if the good old DOS - Program would be reborn as a DOS -
free  version but would function in its options as the good old SW 4.4 -
(with open dictionary - resources and various printing formats)

In the end it is up to the user. If he/she wants to improve his/her spelling
competence there is no need to use any dictionary at all. Teacher would have
the chance to prevent any access to the dictionary. All I can say is that I
understood that my students would prefer different levels of elaborated
dictionaries -and SW - DOS does allow that without any problem!


 Thanks again for your input.
Have a great day

Stefan ;-)   L.I.F.E.



-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
[mailto:owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu]Im Auftrag von Sandy Fleming
Gesendet: Freitag, 15. Oktober 2004 08:56
An: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Betreff: RE: [sw-l] Frustrations of SignWriter DOS users...

Hi Stefan!

I hope you don't mind me playing devil's advocate and saying that SW-DOS was
more silver than gold!

I do think the SW-DOS keyboard got most things right and that as far as
keying goes I hope future SW word processors are very similar to it - not on
the screen, but on the keyboard.

One thing that people seem to like that I don't think is such a good thing
is developing a dependency on typing glosses to pull signs from dictionaries
as a way of typing text. I think this is bound to encourage bad habits such
as not bothering with variations in facial expression, not bothering to use
lanes, and not bothering with degrees of meaning. The idea of using
dictionary glossing for fast input means that we're depending on the fact
that written oral languages are ahead of SW in this respect, when we should
actually be concentrating on how to bring pure SW input methods up to speed
so that they're on a level with oral languages instead of dependent on them.

Of course, this means that SW writers have to know all the spellings in
their head, just as oral language writers can spell almost everything almost
without thinking.

So we need to find ways of speeding up input (as well as bringing education
to the point where people can spell well).

I'm going to suggest some ways that input might be speeded up.

Automatic positioning - there are the most usual positions for the head and
hands, but also sometimes the hand position can be related to a contact
symbol or the curve that marks the part of the head that the hand is placed
near. It won't be possible to make this 100% reliable bur it would reduce
the amount of repositioning required after a sign is typed. One of the best
things about SW-DOS is that it already does this quite well, so it's
probably a "must have" for future word processors).

Automatic insertion of non-dominant hand. A universal in sign languages is
that the non-dominant hand often mimics the dominant hand in either a cyclic
or simultaneous motion. Once the typist has put in the dominant hand and its
motion, it should be possible to type a keypress to insert the non-dominant
hand and its motion moving simultaneously, and another keypress (perhaps the
same keypress, but shifted), to insert the non-dominant hand moving
cyclically.

Quick access to the universal handshapes. A universal in sign languages is
that four handshapes (flat hand, "5" hand, index and fist) are used much
more frequently than any other handshapes. A word processor should offer
quick, maybe even single-key, access to each of those handshapes.

Improved selection of orientation. Currently, SW input programs typically
allow us to cycle between the six orientations of any displayed handshape. I
think it would make for faster typing if there were one key to flip between
floor and wall plane, and another to cycle through the three handshapes in
that plane. Possibly (keypress) to cycle the three orientations, and
shift-(keypress) to flip planes.

Language statistics. Once we have large dictionaries built up in SWML (eg
the Puddle dictionaries), it should be possible to analyse the SWML in a
database to find what sort of things appear very frequently and what rarely
occurs, either in a given language or as sign language universals. Word
processors could be designed to make more frequent patterns more readily
available.

Use of dictionaries without glossing. Obviously there's spellchecking, but
also there's the possibility that predictive input might be more effective
for sign languages than it is for oral languages. So we might be able to
type just some of the symbols until the software recognises what we're doing
as a unique sign from the dictionary (this does encourage some of the bad
havits of the glossing approach though - there's probably no real substitute
for knowing how to spell!).

What else?

Sandy