AW: SignMail

[Steve Slevinski]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your great work and interest.  I appreciate hearing how you 
and your class use SignPuddle.  Know that an improved SignMail is on the 
way.

For the old SignMail, I just fixed the "Load into SignText" link.  After 
loading into SignText, press the options button when you're done.  On 
the options page, you can use the 4th command button down for SignMail 
to resend.

I've been spending my time on intricate and technical details.  The 
details have been evolving faster than I can keep up with.  I thought 
the major changes would be done with the initial release of my Internet 
Draft; however, for the Unicode proposal, I have a focused and 
substantial change to make.  After I release the "01" version of my 
Internet Draft, no further changes are planned.

I have an automated conversion working for SignPuddle 1.5 to SignPuddle 
1.6.  The data is being converting from the ISWA 2008 to the ISWA 2010.  
This part of the conversion is working perfectly by design.

The format of the data is changing from build strings & XML with symbol 
IDs to a lite markup with proposed Unicode characters.

The storage of the data is changing from thousands of files, down to 1 
XML file for each puddle.  Even the German dictionary with 14,000+ 
entries is available as a single file that is only 6 MB as XML, and only 
1.5 MB when zipped.

These changes may seem abstract and unrelated to the end user, but they 
are key. The primary goal is standardized and portable data.  The 
secondary goal is to be able to write a simple and standardized 
SignWriting plugin for any application.

For example... A plugin for the Firefox browser could enable any online 
application to use SignWriting in standard text fields.  A plugin for 
the Thunderbird email application could use a downloaded puddle 
dictionary to recreate SignMail without requiring access to the SignBank 
server.  A plugin for the Abiword text editor could provide a basic 
SignWriting text editor that would be available on most operating systems.

In June, we hope to get an encouraging response from the Unicode 
consortium on our proposal.  An ISWA 2010 font file should be part of 
the proposal.

The dam is about to burst.  We're about to fill the world with written 
sign.

Have a great day,
-Steve
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