Query on Sign Documents

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
September 1, 2005

Beautifully explained, Ingvild! Thank you for this great explanation.  
You are the only one I know of who has used SignBank and placed  
SignSpellings into a Sequence, so you understand this so well. I am  
encouraging Charles to download SignBank, so he too can enjoy placing  
signs into SignSpelling sequences and just by doing it, after awhile,  
it starts to make sense in general. Of course, we have much to learn,  
as we start sorting larger dictionaries, so that is why SignBank is  
so flexible, so we can experiement with different ways to sort...

Download SignBank
http://www.SignBank.org/downloads

Plus, now with the future SignPuddle 2.0, Steve is starting by  
building in similar features into SignPuddle, and he has also  
automated it a little, so establishing the sequence for each  
SignSpelling might go faster for the person entering the sign into  
the dictionary....We are starting with simple spellings and will  
build from there...

This is a process, everyone. I want to thank all of you for your  
contributions to this issue. Charles wrote a paper on how he and  
Marianne in Brazil sorted their dictionary by hand. Once you learn  
SignBank, Charles, you can apply those theories to your dictionary in  
SignBank and that will give us a computer analysis, rather than just  
discussing it... I suspect as we do this more and more it will become  
more and more automated...

   Val ;-)



On Sep 1, 2005, at 5:06 AM, Ingvild Roald wrote:
> As I understand it, the 'sign spelling' is how the written sign  
> *looks*,
> while the signspelling sequence is how the written sign is placed  
> in the
> 'alpabetical order' to be looked up in a dictionary. Thus, signs  
> that are
> spelled in the wrong way (not using the contact position but some  
> other
> position of the hands, but the same movements, for instance) would  
> still
> be placed in the same place. This is not bad, as that will help us  
> easily
> see which signs are the same, and choose the better looking way  
> (easier to
> read)  to write the sign, and weed those that are harder to read  
> out of
> the dictionary. This will take some time, though, as many persons will
> have to do the input and aslo the eavaluation.
>
> Ingvild
>