ASL signers...please read this and give your response...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 10, 2006

Ingvild Roald in Norway wrote:
> Or maybe it would be better if the pic signs stay in the same  
> pudle, but with the 'surname' pic - then they would be awaylable to  
> see, and could be re-written by the one who wants to use this sign,  
> and thus be (slowly) changed into new symbols -

Hello Ingvild and everyone -
That is exactly what we have right now, Ingvild, and have had it that  
way, from the beginning. There are only two Puddles that have this  
problem...the US and Germany. We all had a lot of signs in the old  
SignWriter DOS format, so Steve placed those in the Puddles as  
graphics and it says it is a graphic when you go into Dictionary  
Editors. And the idea was that we would all re-do all those signs,  
but we haven't...what has happened instead is that people add new  
signs, and the old ones rarely get changed...so now we have a  
dictionary that cannot always be used because it is not pure  
SWML...you don't have that problem in Norway, and I am glad!

I believe that the old ones will never be completely changed if we  
leave them in the US SignPuddle because people see the pics and don't  
realize that they have to be changed...then later they are frustrated  
when half the US dictionary cannot load signs into SignText...smile...

Which is another comedy! We developed SignText with the hopes that  
people would add their signs directly, just as we type English  
without copying and pasting from a dictionary, but instead we are  
bringing signs already written into SignText anyway - ha! So the same  
problems we had with SignWriter DOS are happening again...SignWriter  
DOS had an excellent way to type directly, without using the  
dictionary, but people used the dictionary to paste signs  
instead...and SignText can do both too...

I guess by having American signs that cannot load into SignText from  
SignPuddle...maybe it is a blessing in disguise - ha! Then people  
have to create directly in Sign Language instead of using glosses to  
paste signs from a dictionary! smile...

Val ;-)