Stable software into the future ....

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
September 15, 2011

Hello Alan, Steve, Ingvild, Stefan, Charles, Adam, Bill and everyone -

Thank you, Alan, for your beautiful description of your need for stable software, and thanks to Steve, and his huge efforts, we can gladly say that YES...the software is stablized. Of course there are always little tweaks that can be done, and new features can always be added upon the central core of his code, but Steve has now provided us with stability. THANK YOU, Steve, for your planning and making this possible.

And the ISWA 2010, with all its flexibility and large number of symbols, gives us a tool to be able to write in whatever style of SignWriting we choose. Within the ISWA 2010, using the symbols there, people can build new symbols if they need to, without disturbing the older symbols that other people use daily. So there is stability from the symbol core as well. The ISWA 2010 is a tool to build sign language documents and dictionaries for the future.

As an example, Stefan, and his marvelous team in Germany, has already written 15,581 entries in the SignPuddle DGS Dictionary - An amazing and impressive amount of signs, all using the ISWA 2010, as do all the dictionaries and documents in SignPuddle.

Jonathan Duncan, in Honduras, is another programmer who is using the ISWA 2010 for his new software, SignWriter Studio, which is close to Beta testing. SignWriter Studio will also coordinate with SignPuddle, which will be very useful.

If there are any older documents, Ingvild, that you would like to have copied from old software or old print-outs, into SignPuddle 1.6 online, we can do that copy work for you. Tell me if you need that service...it is free to anyone with old documents that need to be copied into SignPuddle...Just contact me and send me your old documents, whether they are in SignWriter DOS or are pdf documents or whatever - we will copy the signs in one at a time without changing anything - you can then go in and edit them later.

I will answer everyone's other messages as soon as I can - I  look forward to it, believe me...it will be fun!

Have a wonderful day everyone -

Val ;-)

---------

On Sep 15, 2011, at 2:23 AM, Ingvild Roald wrote:

> Thanks Steve,
> 
> now I dare do some more work on the Norwegian files. I have been puting it up for some time because of the changes and the need to do things over - now I hope that things will work steadily.
> (Sorry I have to wait a little longer, because of other pressing work, but I look forward to seet myself down to re-enter hundreds of signs, and quite a few that I never entered before too).
> 
> Ingvild 
> 
> > Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:02:37 -0500
> > From: slevin at SIGNPUDDLE.NET
> > Subject: Re: Put the blame on me ;-)
> > To: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
> > 
> > Hi Alan,
> > 
> > Thanks for you comments.
> > 
> > On 9/14/11 9:32 AM, Alan Post wrote:
> > > I have struggled just to keep up with the changes to SWIS and
> > > ISWA--I've had to convert my database three or four times, which
> > > sometimes takes me many months to get around to--during which I
> > > don't use SignWriting. :-(
> > 
> > Yes, I understand this very well. Every time I put out a new standard, 
> > I make additional busy work for myself and others. Back in 2008, I was 
> > hoping that I had a stable standard, but every time that I tried to use 
> > the standard, I always found a serious flaw that could not be 
> > overlooked. I would find that my code libraries were becoming overly 
> > complicated and slow. The only way to address the various flaws was 
> > with a new encoding.
> > 
> > > I *love* SWIS2. I am producing documents with it that are so, so
> > > beautiful compared to SWIS. I don't wish to complain about where
> > > we are, but to articulate just how expensive changes are, to me.
> > > Even seemingly minor issues can be major headaches for me--I would
> > > much rather be in the business of *using* SignWriting!
> > Agreed! I love SWIS 2 as well. The code is simple and clean. It does 
> > what I want it to do. I have plans to expand the code and there are no 
> > more serious flaws that will get in the way.
> > 
> > The ISWA 2010 has been stable since it's release in 2010 and the Unicode 
> > proposal will hopefully be approved next year.
> > 
> > There will not be any more changes to the encoding so you will not need 
> > to convert your database again. Any writing you do today will still be 
> > valid years from now.
> > 
> > Fortunately, the question of writing style is outside of the encoding.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > -Steve
> > 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20110915/01cb6232/attachment.htm>