Rotation Symbols

[Valerie Sutton]

On Jul 5, 2007, at 2:32 PM, Bill Reese wrote:
> My first thought is that it's theoretically possible to have this  
> rotation happen diagonally up, and diagonally to the inside and it  
> seems that the symbols you drew pretty much cover variations.   
> Isn't it possible to use existing symbols in SignPuddle and rotate  
> them to those positions?

Hi Bill!
That is the whole point. At the moment, they cannot rotate in  
SignPuddle, and could never rotate in SignWriter DOS either. I  
purposely limited those symbols so they couldn't rotate in the past,  
because we were trying to cut back on the number of symbols and at  
the time I thought we could limit those symbols to always being  
straight up and down or forward and back...That limitation was done  
in 1986, when Rich Gleaves was trying to create a computer program  
with the Apple //e and //c, with a very limited amount of memory...so  
he asked me to try to cut back on the number of symbols...But now the  
memory issue is gone, and it is simply a matter of choice...

So I realized this the other day...we are giving the traveling  
rotations the full 8-rotations like handshapes and other symbols, but  
not static Rotation Symbols...So it is the limitation on the static  
Rotation Symbols that is out of date...and causing some problems when  
people learn the system perhaps? making all the Movement Symbols  
consistently rotating and flopping would also help in other  
ways...keystrokes would be consistent etc...at the moment the  
Rotation Symbols are not typed the same way as other symbols...

I am interested to see what others say too ...

Thanks so much for your input, Bill!

Val ;-)