Request for comment on a technical SignWriting document

[Steve Slevinski]

Hi Bill,

On 12/24/10 9:38 AM, Bill Reese wrote:
> Steve,
> Couldn't a line return work instead of a space every 72 characters?
>
Yes, a line return could be used without a problem.  Line returns makes 
sense from a line number perspective for various tools, such as "vi" and 
"diff".  This will affect the pattern matching for characters and white 
space.

The characters can be 3 hex as in "7fa" or underscored hex as in "_7fa" 
or Unicode plane 15 as in "%xFDE8F".

Interestingly, the underscored hex "_7fa" is the same size as the 
Unicode U+FDE8F.  Both require 4 bytes per character in UTF-8.  I prefer 
the underscored hex because it is easier to read, write, edit, and 
process.  The underscore is needed to avoid accidental collisions when 
searching.  The underscored hex can be reduced to 1.5 bytes per 
character in binary, while the UTF-8 will balloon to a staggering 12 
bytes per character when sent in a URL.

My software is using sign text for layout with underscored hex.  I'm 
putting spaces between signs.  I'm putting spaces before and after 
punctuation.  My matching pattern includes hex digits with spaces and 
underscores. Before processing, I strip and ignore spaces and underscores.

I have all of the SignPuddle 1.5 data available in sign text for layout 
with spaced and underscored hex.  Every puddle is available as a single 
SPML file.  You can see the data in the SPML files in the SignPuddle 1.6 
data directory.
http://signbank.org/signpuddle1.6/data/spml/

Thanks for reading,
-Steve