Binary SignWriting history and conversion

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 18, 2011

THANK YOU, Steve, for this outstanding work. It is really fascinating, to view all the sources for the different formats you have developed. This message is a treasure trove of information for all of us...

....and Alan, you have BSW once again!

Val ;-)

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On Apr 18, 2011, at 8:19 AM, Steve Slevinski wrote:

> Hi Alan,
> 
> Binary SignWriting was an attempt to use character data to encode sign texts.  While the plain text of symbols (1-dimensional strings) remains the foundation of BSW, the additional characters of structure and number have been eliminated from BSW.
> 
> Over the past year, I've made several key distinctions and improvements to the data standards for sorting, layout, and Unicode integration.  BSW now only deals with symbol identity.  BSW no longer includes characters for layout or annotation.  The BSW foundation is expressly defined and can be used with any real or theoretical higher level text encoding for SignWriting that uses the ISWA 2010.
> http://www.signpuddle.net/plaintext
> 
> I have restored the BSW 3A links for SignPuddle 1.5; however, these links will not exist in SignPuddle 1.6. Testing will begin shortly.
> 
> Because there are several historical data formats being used, I will create a conversion package for the historical BSW data formats.  You will be able to use it online or downloaded (requires php environment).
> 
> The new Cartesian SignWriting data format is able to fully encode SignWriting.  It uses the latest Unicode proposal and includes an ASCII equivalent data format.  CSW will be a stable standard for many years to come.
> 
> I have converted the SignPuddle 1.5 data set to the new CSW format for SignPuddle 1.6.  You can download an entire puddle as a single XML file.
> 
> The ASL - English dictionary is a 3MB.
> http://www.signbank.org/signpuddle1.6/data/spml/sgn4.spml
> 
> You can open the SPML file in any standard text editor or specialized XML editor.  By using search, copy and paste: you can access the sign language data directly.
> 
> After SignPuddle 1.6 goes live, I will finalize work on the updated SignWriting Image Server.  I can prepare a development snapshot of SWIS if you are interested.
> 
> Regards,
> -Steve
>