[sw-l] SWDB - Linguistic SignWriting Database

[rocha at ATLAS.UCPEL.TCHE.BR]

Sandy,

  Simply: great!

  Sure, the z-layer *has* to be added to SWML!

  All the best,

  Antônio Carlos

> Val wrote:
>
>> Stephen Slevinski wrote:
>> > For Sign Maker, I converted all of the IMWA images to black & white.
>> > I then
>> > converted the white to transparent.  So the images that Sign Maker
>> > uses are
>> > actually black and transparent.
>>
>> I see. I am sorry if this was extra work for you. While I was making
>> the GIFs, I could have chosen a transparent background. There were also
>> other choices, like trimming each symbol to be tight...namely no space
>> at all around the symbol, except for the symbols that have holes on the
>> inside of the symbol...that would be transparent....Actually the
>> trimming can be done in batches...automated changes, in Photoshop, but
>> 25,000 GIFs are a lot of symbols to trim, and to make transparent, but
>> I will be happy to do that...So the question is...What should come
>> first? Fixing the current GIFs of the IMWA, or adding the new symbols?
>> And should I do the new ones in the transparent trimmed method, while
>> leaving the others in the old format? That might be very confusing for
>> programmers and will screw us up...smile...
>
> Val, I've thought of a good way of doing this without changing the IMWA at
> all.
>
> As you were saying, even if we changed the IMWA, the SW software
> displaying
> the signs would still have to do something to make the layers
> distinguishable somehow, such as outlining the top shape.
>
> This still leaves us some problems - it's wouldn't help much with the BSL
> sign for England, for example, where only the fingers overlap.
>
> However, an even simpler solution for the programmer, and probably more
> fun
> for the readers and writers too, would be to allow the different layers to
> be different colours. Since we have to do something like this anyway,
> there's really no need to change the IMWA.
>
> The attached gif shows some examples. I've chosen black for the top layer
> and mid-grey for the bottom layer, as is only sensible for people like me
> with black and white printers! Perhaps I should ahve made the grey a
> little
> darker, but never mind - a good sign processor would allow the user to
> choose his "main" font colour as well as his "low" font colour.
>
> "England" and "defend" look the same whichever version of the IMWA we use.
> "Work" looks different so I've given both versions.
>
> It seems to me that it works well either way, although the new-style IMWA
> would be slightly clearer for some signs.
>
> The solution with the current IMWA seems satisfactory to me, though. So
> perhaps all we need to do is update SWML to add a z-layer (perhaps as a
> number so that if someone felt there was a need to have more layers, it
> could be done). Then the current IMWA will do, and Stephen and other
> programmers have the choice of implementing z-layers in their software, or
> ignoring them.
>
> More advanced software could even calculate the overlaps and make the
> upper
> layer look opaque, so even if you want the opaque effect, it doesn't mean
> you need to change the IMWA. Of course, you might still _want_ to update
> the
> IMWA, just to make life easier for future programmers, but no doubt future
> programmers will produce all sorts of versions of the IMWA to make their
> own
> software look better - perhaps that's not your job any more, Val  :)
>
> The important thing for now is to provide the z-layer information in SWML,
> to make all these things possible.
>
> Sandy
>


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