[Sw-l] Hello from South Korea

Fri Apr 12 11:04:52 EDT 2019

SignWriting List
April 12, 2019

Hello Dr. Sung-Eun Hong!
Welcome to the SignWriting List. Thank you for telling us about your project: the Korean Sign Language (KSL) Dictionary compiled by the NIKL. We are delighted to learn about your project.

And thank you, Rachel, for sharing about the SignTyp project (www.signtyp.uconn.edu <http://www.signtyp.uconn.edu/>) which is an important project because SignTyp uses SignWriting as a linguistic analysis tool for 20 sign languages, connected with the University of Connecticut (UCONN). You can read more about SignTyp in several places on the web. Thank you, Rachel, for your pioneering work:

SignTyp Presentation
http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0054.html

I skyped with Steve Slevinski this morning and he will be answering soon. Steve told me more about SignWriting Fonts. Steve was working on a SignWriting 2D Font, that will make SignWriting available in Microsoft Word and other programs, but we lack funding for the project so we are looking for funds right now to continue the development.

Meanwhile we can search by symbols in many ways with other software, and with the current fonts we have, and there are so many cool things being developed. SignWriting symbols are in Unicode (Unicode 8), but the Unicode committee needs to work on improving the way it works for actual users...

I look forward to seeing the discussions here on the SignWriting List and thank you everyone for participating.

Later I can share with you how I would write a document using current software if you would like - and also how dictionaries with over 20,000 entries, like Stefan Woehrmann's wonderful German Sign Language dictionary which can be used in SignPuddle and other software such as DELEGS software from Germany, to create documents ... There are good tools to use...

and just a side note - I love FileMaker Pro and used it for our SignWriting databases for years, and although it is not like the newer programs for SignWriting, it had great value as a SignWriting database program because we specially programmed FileMaker to do what we wanted it to do, and later I can share that with you too - If I have a month with a little funding for a FileMaker programmer to help me, I could update it to work with the current versions of FileMaker Pro too - although that is not a solution for the issues of SignWriting Fonts, it would also be a project that could be completed -

Our future is bright. Talk to you later -

Have a great day everyone -

Val ;-)

Valerie Sutton
sutton at signwriting.org

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> On Apr 12, 2019, at 7:10 AM, <00000018ddb4db4a-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU> <00000018ddb4db4a-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Hi Sung-Eun, the SignTyp project has been using Signwriting with some additional information about how symbols are related to each other (for example, how the right hand is related to one location and the left hand to another).  You can see our work at www.signtyp.uconn.edu <http://www.signtyp.uconn.edu/>. Besides the sign puddles for over 20 langauges, there is information about the meaning of each signwriting symbol available as  a translation spreadsheet.   I have recently developed a method to create signwritings using a spreadsheet where information from one sign can be easily copied to create a new signwriting for a similar sign.  However, this is very spreadsheet oriented and requires that the transcriber understand formulas/pivot tables etc.   
> Steve Slevinski’s fonts are very helpful and I use them in the spreadsheets often. I am able to copy a signwriting symbol from a spreadsheet to a ms word document, but I am not sure how to create the symbol within the document.  I’m sure Steve has an answer.  
> I’d be happy to share information etc.  
> Rachel Channon
>  
>  
> From: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages <SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU <mailto:SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>> On Behalf Of Dr. Sung-Eun Hong
> Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 10:26 PM
> To: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU <mailto:SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>
> Subject: Hello from South Korea
>  
> Dear SW-List, 
>  
> Valerie invited me to this list and so here I am. 
>  
>> My name is Sung-Eun HONG, I am working on a corpus-based Korean Sign Language (KSL)  dictionary which will be compiled by the National Institute of Korean Language (NIKL). 
>>  
>> The NIKL is considering to use SignWriting in their KSL Dictionary. If this really happens it is expected that SignWriting will play an important role in the Korean sign language world in the future. Currently there are only few people using SignWriting in Korea. 
>> Anyway right now we are having troubles to add SignWriting to our database (currently FileMaker Pro Advanced). 
>>  
>> I did explore the signwriting.org <http://signwriting.org/> webpage, which offers diverse softwares like signmaker 2017, Rand keyboard and so on. I am not very familiar with computer stuff, but I couldn't find anything which would allow me to copy SignWriting symbols from signmaker to programms like word, excel or FileMaker. SignMaker's output is an image and the Rand keybord seems to be a tool for the internet (chatrooms, wikipedia). I also know about signpuddle, but it looks to me like an internet dictionary, where I can save my signwriting entries.
>> We would like to install SignWriting as a font (which I already did) and to be able to copy, paste and edit it in any software. This is important because only then it is possible to search for SignWriting symbols in the KSL Dictionary. 
>>  
>> I just found something in the list archive about MS Word, but this only strengthens my assumption that signwriting can only copied as an image. 
>>  
>> Anybody, who can help me?
>>  
>> Thank you~~~~!
>>  
>> Best, Sung-Eun
>>  

________________________________________________

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