[Sw-l] Report from Steve's desk

Sun Aug 2 16:30:13 UTC 2015

SignWriting List
August 1, 2015

Thank you, Steve, for posting this important report, and thank you for your presentations at the SignWriting Symposium too ;-)

There is so much information in this technical report, I am sure not everyone probably realizes the historic nature of the information…but in time we will all benefit from the results of your meeting with the Unicode-related committees last week in Redmond, Washington state.

SignWriting will be spreading with the use of Unicode in time, and Steve is laying the groundwork for this to happen.

I will answer in more depth next week - Thank you again for posting this message -

Val ;-)

———

> On Aug 1, 2015, at 7:27 AM, Stephen E Slevinski Jr <slevin at signpuddle.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi SignWriting list,
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed the symposium this year.  I enjoyed every presentation I understood, and even the ones I didn't.  I look forward to the English translations.
> 
> In the past 3 weeks, I have created 5 presentations.  I was only supposed to create 2 for the symposium, but new topics kept coming up and I was in the groove.
> 
> Please feel free to contact me on the list or privately about any of these presentations.
> 
> 
> ------------------------
> The SignWriting Stack 2015
> http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0043.html
> 
> This is a general overview of the technologies related to SignWriting and the best practices for online use and development.
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------
> The Use and Structure of SignMaker 2015
> http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0049.html
> 
> SignMaker is an amazing sign editor and dictionary.  SignMaker highlights many of the advantages to the Formal SignWriting design. The searching possible and the huge sorted dictionaries make me smile.
> 
> I have it on my desktop and use it to view/edit whatever Formal SignWriting strings I see.  I smiled when I saw Stefan's name sign appear in well formed FSW.
> 
> For an even deeper analysis of the FSW, I use the sw10js API page. API stands for application programming interface.  On the API page, you can analyze symbol keys, FSW strings, and query strings.
> http://slevinski.github.io/sw10js/api.html
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
> SignWriting in an ASCII World
> http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0049.html
> 
> This presentation goes in depth into the ASCII markups and definitions.  It explains the small subset of Regular Expressions that SignWriting leverages for definition and searching.
> 
> SignWriting data has been stable in Formal SignWriting since January 12, 2012 in ASCII.  The ASCII implementation is half the size of an equivalent Unicode solution.  It is 4 times faster to process ASCII than the equivalent Unicode.
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------
> What about Unicode? (Part 1)
> 
> Issues with SignWriting in Unicode 8
> http://www.slideshare.net/StephenSlevinski/sign-writing-in-unicode-8-issues
> 
> I haven't seriously considered Unicode since 2011.  We have different ideas.  The history of the Unicode 8 proposal and a detailed analysis can be found in this presentation.
> 
> I was fortunate to be able to attend a Unicode Technical Committee just this past week.  It was a group of about a dozen experts in script encoding, linguistics, and character encoding.  Everyone introduced themselves by their name and then the company, such as MicroSoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Adobe, ...
> 
> I was proud to introduce myself as Steve Slevinski, Center for Sutton Movement Writing.  Val made this trip possible.  Thanks Val.
> 
> I was informed that there are at least 2 people working on SignWriting: one at MicroSoft and one at Google.  They will be using the tools I've provided to implement their solution.  They don't know how to do it, so they were interested in my work and grateful for the information I have provided.
> 
> Over 2 days, I was able to present 4 different times.  I used the above slideshow twice on the first day.  We argued and discussed and I earned their respect.
> 
> I was able to explain my issues with SignWriting in Unicode 8.  They now agree that the Unicode 8 proposal is insufficient and has serious issues.
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------
> What about Unicode? (Part 2)
> 
> Thanks to the UTC
> http://www.slideshare.net/StephenSlevinski/thanks-to-the-utc
> 
> After the first day, I rushed back to the hotel and prepared a second slideshow.  It's much shorter, but there are several powerful slide that silenced and room and one person exclaimed.  "Wow. That's huge." (slide 6).  This slide was the turning point.
> 
> Now there is another Unicode expert who is interested in working on SignWriting.  They asked that I provide several examples in my various formats: PNG image, Formal SignWriting, PUA Plane 15, and PUA Plane 16.   They admitted that we do things with SignWriting that they can not do with Unicode.  I told them that we are in production; we can write every sign language and any facial expression today.
> 
> They agreed to seriously consider my proposals.  Because we have such a large set of data, they agreed to the idea of 1) being able to convert from FSW to a future Unicode design and 2) being able to convert back to FSW from the future Unicode design.
> 
> Full speed ahead with Formal SignWriting.  3 1/2 years of stability and forward compatibility with Unicode 9, 10, 11 or whenever we have a workable Unicode solution.
> 
> So the Unicode process has been successfully rebooted.  Unicode 8 is fine to use for prototyping, and this is what the big corporations needed to begin using SignWriting, but Unicode 8 for SignWriting needs major revisions and additional work.  They could simply adopt my work, but they are uncomfortable with freeform 2-dimensional creation of signs.
> 
> We who use SignWriting are playing the long game.  We still have first generation writers.  Imagine the written sign language world when we have several generations with the tradition of writing!
> 
> I plan to write a more detailed blog for Gerard about the future of sign language Wikipedia projects and how Unicode fits into the design.
> 
> Now I'm going on a weeks vacation.
> 
> Regards,
> -Steve
> 
> ________________________________________________
> 
> 
> SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION
> 
> Valerie Sutton
> SignWriting List moderator
> sutton at signwriting.org
> 
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________________________________________________

SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION

Valerie Sutton
SignWriting List moderator
sutton at signwriting.org

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