SignPuddle development update

[Stephen E Slevinski Jr]

Hi List,

I continue to work on SignPuddle development.  Building up the pieces 
one at a time and connecting them together, layer upon layer.  I've had 
some tremendous success with the database and with API access.  I'd like 
to share my latest achievements.  I apologize that the details are 
technical.  Eventually, these details will be covered up by easy to use 
graphical interfaces.

Today, I release a new version of the SignWriting Icon Server.  It 
includes a shiny new API: application programming interface.  An API 
allows others to access our data with modern web technologies.  I 
currently only have the English/ASL dictionary loaded from SignPuddle.  
I am still working on the database and I will load additional puddles in 
the near future.

So what can the API do?  A user requests data and the API returns the 
results.

If you visit http://SignPuddle.com you can try it yourself.  The top of 
the page has a rudimentary front end that allows you to access the API.



The first input box allows you to search by spoken language.  If we 
search for "hello", we will see the following results.



The second input box allows you to search by sign language using Formal 
SignWriting or a query string.  If you have a sign encoded with FSW that 
you found online, you can process that sign with the API.  Let's 
consider the following FSW string: 
AS18701S1870aS2e734S20500M518x533S1870a489x515S18701482x490S20500508x496S2e734500x468

Visualize will show the sign image.


Query will search the database for similar signs.


Reverse will search for spoken language equivalents for similar signs.



The query strings are very powerful, but esoteric.  A graphical 
interface will help, but for now, here is a quick example.  Using the 
ISWA HTML Reference ( http://signbank.org/iswa ), we determine that we 
are interested in signs with a particular hand shape (S115) and the 
single contact (S205).  These keys need a specific fill and rotation, 
such as S115 with fill 0 and rotation 0 for key S11500 or we can leave 
the fill and rotation unspecified such as S115uu.


The first query string we'll use is QS11500S20500


The second query string will leave the fill and rotation unspecified for 
the hand shape with query string QS115uuS20500




So just a quick taste of things to come.  Thanks for hanging in there 
with the technical details.  Query strings are detailed in Modern 
SignWriting, section 9: 
http://signpuddle.net/wiki/index.php/MSW:Regular_Storage_Form#9.B._Query_String

Questions or comments are welcome.

Regards,
?Steve
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