typing program

[Charles Butler]

Having been a part of the SignWriting community for more than 30 years, i am somewhat concerned that the usefulness of a typing program has been lost.

When computers were first introduced to signwriting, I went to New York City for a demonstration of program on the AppleIIe which worked almost magically. 


I could start with an English sentence, with a highlight of a mouse change that sentence to ASL fingerspelling, and then go through and word by word replace English words with ASL signs and then begin moving them around to show the changes into ASL grammar. 


I can't do that now. Entry into the SW puddle is slow, painstaking, and is not given to the speed of typing which is going to be needed if SW is ever going to be an everyday writing system on a computer. 


What ever happened to the approach of typing, not moving a mouse, to retrieve a handshape, rotate it, add facial expressions, and think like a signer not digging through a mouse-retrieval system to a shape buried under 5 layers of clicking? 


With the change to your new coding system, that becomes even less transparent. It may be great for programmers but for the layperson it has become frustrating and trying to demo a program in a public school system is not one I would want to do now.  


SignWriting as handwriting is still very useful, but even with my dictionary program, I can't just "retrieve" an entry. A relational database would have to be tied to every piece of writing, and that gets very cumbersome. What happens if the net goes down, there goes the writing. 

 
Charles Butler
chazzer3332000 at yahoo.com
240-764-5748
Clear writing moves business forward.
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