Signpuddle 1.5

Fri Mar 30 15:28:25 UTC 2007

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for trying it.  I'm really happy with the new translate.

1) It should be possible to remember what radio buttons were selected, 
but trickier than first look because the text is changing.  I have an 
idea and I'll put it on my list. 

2) SignText is  a work in progress.  I'm planning on totally rewriting 
SignText.  The new SignText will include saving, uploading and 
downloading.  It will be usable as a stand alone editor or embedded in 
SignPuddle.  But I also want the current SignText to be usable in the 
meantime. 

This is what I've come up with.  I appreciate the feedback and sounding 
board.  I still need to update my SWML definition, but we'll have to 
talk about that later.

SignPuddle 1.5 no longer uses bookmarks to save SignText documents.  The 
documents are saved with dictionary entries. 

Adding a SignText Document
=====================
There are 3 ways to add SignText documents.  The first is by pressing 
the SignText button located with the main commands on the left.  This 
will open SignText for the current puddle you're in.  When you're done, 
press save and give it a title.

The second way is to add a SignText document directly to a sign.  If you 
have rights to edit a sign, there will be a SignText icon under the sign 
itself.  Pressing that SignText button will open SignText and pressing 
Save will add the document to the sign.

The third way is with the Translate feature.  After you have typed in 
your sentence, selected the right signs by radio button and pressed 
Update, you will see a section called "Load into Puddle".   Select the 
puddle you want the sentence saved in and it will load SignText.  Make 
some changes if you want than press Save and give it a title.

Editing a SignText Document
=====================
Editing a SignText document is simple.  Find the right dictionary 
entry.  Under the SignText document, click on the SignText button.  It 
will load the document into SignText and pressing save will update the 
SignText document for the dictionary entry.  No more bookmarks!

Val made a bunch of video help files.  Videos 14 and 26 offer a visual 
explanation.
http://www.signbank.org/signpuddle/help/SignPuddle15/

Regards,
-Steve

Stuart Thiessen wrote:
> I can tell you put a lot of work into this. :)  Two comments though 
> regarding the Translate feature:
>
> 1) Is there a way to freeze the signs that I did select with the radio 
> button?  I put in my sentence, selected the radio buttons of what I 
> wanted, and then realized I wanted a different sign or I put in the 
> wrong gloss. So I went back and changed the gloss and updated, but all 
> my radio button selections were lost. So could the form remember what 
> radio button selections were kept for the specific signs that are 
> still in the sentence after I edited the gloss?
>
> 2) When I am doing something under time pressures, I often use the 
> Translate function to whip out a quick sentence and then clean it up 
> in SignText. Now, with 1.0, I would save the gloss that I used in 
> Translate in my keynote presentation comments or in a text file so 
> that I could get the same sentence back if I needed to change things. 
> Now, it seems that feature will not work because it is not possible to 
> access the underscored versions of a sign through Translate. I haven't 
> done the bookmarking with SignText as much because I had observed that 
> there is no way to edit a bookmark and save over the existing 
> bookmark. I have to create a new bookmark if I change a bookmark. That 
> seemed counterintuitive to me. Besides, I'd just prefer to save a file 
> and upload a file (SWML or SPML or whatever the format is) to do my 
> editing of SW documents. It seems easier to me to use the file to 
> share with others. Is that something that is coming up for SignText?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stuart
> On Mar 30, 2007, at 8:34, Steve Slevinski wrote:
>
>>  Hi Bill,
>>
>>  Glad you like it.
>>
>>  You're smiley face in the translate program is really interesting.  
>> I'll explain.
>>
>>  :-) is actually 3 characters in SignPuddle.  : and ) are punctuation 
>> characters and SignPuddle replaces those characters with the 
>> SignWriting punctuation.  The parenthesis was flipped over due to a 
>> bug.  I'll  fix it.
>>
>>  The - however is a totally different matter.  In the original 
>> SignPuddle the dash - and the underscore _ where special characters.  
>> In the 1.5 translate section, the dash, underscore and a space are 
>> considered the same. 
>>
>>  In the translate section, if a term can't be found it performs a 
>> search.  Since the dash is considered a space, the search returns any 
>> term with a space, dash, or underscore.  I'm not sure if this is the 
>> best idea on my part.  We'll have to see how it  works out.
>>
>>  An example...
>>  Let's consider 2 signs "he go there" and "he go here".  If you typed 
>> "he-go" in the translate box and the dictionary didn't have a sign 
>> for "he go",  it would return "he go there" and "he go here".  Nice 
>> in theory.
>>
>>  The ? mark is due to the dreaded "graphic only" signs.  These are 
>> signs that are graphics only and do not contain any information about 
>> the symbols and their position.  They need to be cleaned up or removed.
>>
>>  Regards,
>>  -Steve
>>
>>
>>
>> wreese01 at TAMPABAY.RR.COM wrote:<unknown.png>This is Great! Worked 
>> smooth after an initial time-out connecting to the server. I tried 
>> the translate feature on "This is great! :-)"
>>>
>>> I added a smiley face just to see how the ASL Signpuddle would 
>>> handle it.
>>>
>>> I love the ability to choose which sign to use but was baffled when 
>>> the "-" in the smiley face gave me a huge number of signs to choose 
>>> from. I couldn't see just a dash. Is this a feature? :-)
>>>
>>> Also, the closing parenthesis looks more like an opening one, but 
>>> I'm not that familiar with punctuation.
>>>
>>> I did see a lot of "?" in the sign options and am assuming those are 
>>> signs that need cleaning up.
>>>
>>> Altogether, it looks nice and worked fast and intuitively for what I 
>>> did.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>> Load message into SignText
>>>
>>> Courtesy of SignBank.org
>>>
>>> d2b6c59c6fb41bf830c26bda2d15a66a = d2b6c59c6fb41bf830c26bda2d15a66a
>> <mime-attachment>
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