SignWriter DOS on Windows Vista 64-bit
Steve Slevinski
slevin at SIGNPUDDLE.NET
Wed Oct 13 17:08:30 UTC 2010
The SignWriter keyboarding style is great. There is a steep learning
curve that is worth the effort to learn. There are multiple layers of
fine tuning that went into the SignWriter keyboard design over the
years. Valerie and Richard Gleaves spent years improving the flow using
a detailed symbol editor that controlled the default behaviors for
centering and cursor controls. Different symbols needed different
information that had to be manually created.
Unfortunately, SignWriter Dos uses dense binary files to store and
retrieve information. There was a tool released to convert SignWriter
Dos SSS-95 binary files to SignWriter Java SSS-99 data files.
I believe SignWriter skipped SSS-2002. I think SW-Edit uses the SSS-2002.
I started using the SSS-2004 symbol set, which became known as the IMWA.
The conversion between the IMWA and the ISWA 2008 is about 99.99%
accurate. Some symbols are slightly off center.
The conversion between the ISWA 2008 and the ISWA 2010 is flawless.
Keyboarding should return. Eventually, we'll need to create an advanced
symbol editor for the ISWA 2010 so that we can capture and process
specialized symbol information for keyboarding. This will fine tune the
keyboarding experience and improve a writer's speed and accuracy.
Regards,
-Steve
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