[sw-l] Movement Writer alpha release

[Charles Butler]

Hello Steven, and list.

Your new Movement Writer alpha release is very interesting.

It's certainly compact and could be put into a palm pilot for quick entry.  I'm a little confused on how to choose a given character and end it, but the one feature I like is that once a character is in the display square, you can move any character around with the mouse rather than having to choose horizontal and vertical numbers, which takes a LOT of time in the current Sign Puddle.  I could see how one could become quite proficient with a mouse, or a stylus, or keyboarding.

I understood the inference of "place this character in this quadrant", but I didn't get how to generate a movement arrow without a lot of hunting and pecking.

The fact that this is totally without English is actually kind of fun.  I certainly wouldn't mind having it in my computer, if I could save the stuff into a dictionary.

This is my quick experiment for ASL "why".

Charles Butler




Stephen Slevinski <slevin at PUDL.INFO> wrote:
Hi List,

I need some feedback. I have a new application that I'm working on. It's
called Movement Writer, written in Javascript.

It uses the IMWA and supports keyboard entry along with the mouse.

I never learned to type with SignWriter, so I made up my own system of
typing. Only the US keyboard is currently supported, but I can support any
keyboard if you are willing to give me a few minutes of your time. I will
also be able to support subsets of the IMWA when they are defined.

http://www.oculog.net/mw/movementwriter.html

Opening the page, you'll notice two 3x3 grids. One for the left hand and
one for the right hand. The hand position is the same as touch typing. The
left index finger is placed on the "F" and the right index finger is placed
on the "J". The pinky is not used for typing. The middle fingers represent
the middle for each grid. If you are familiar with using a number pad, the
idea is the same.

It takes up to 5 keystrokes to select each symbol. After the symbol is
selected, the symbol must be placed. The arrows represent the direction of
placement in the sign box. The first arrow selection is a gross placement:
top, bottom, left, or right. The middle key can also be used to represent
the center. The second arrow selection is a fine placement. Try is a few
times and you should get the hang of it.

After the symbols are placed in the sign box, you can use drag and drop to
move the symbols around.

This is just a proof of concept. I will be adding some of this
functionality to Sign Puddle.

Movement Writer does have several limitation. Only one sign can be created
at a time and it can not be saved. Some handshapes have more than 16
variations; only the first 16 can currently be selected.

If anyone is feeling adventurous, I'd love some feedback.

Thanks for your time,
-Stephen Slevinski
www.oculog.net



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