[Sw-l] [SPAM] Re: Placement of Signs in Space

Tue Apr 27 23:50:00 EDT 2021

Hello Adam, Andre, Cherie, Kacio, Steve, Val and everyone -

It's interesting to see so many ways to do things and the combination of 
viewpoints that is different than the usual way of reading it.

I personally prefer the sizes.  As it feels clear, and the way I would 
write it on paper if I didn't have a movement, or maybe even if I did, 
just to emphasize the depth.

I really like the symbol sizes, and I've included as part of my 
SignWriting programs which was in 2005,  and has been able to write it 
to FSW since Steve and I collaborated on the styling. If my memory 
serves me right, it was concluded that symbol size wasn't necessary to 
write everyday signwriting.  And it was also much harder to size the 
PNGs nicely than it is to size the SVGs and Fonts we have today.

I agree with you Steve, that it's good to have a separation between text 
and styling.  And if we change all the symbols by the same % then that 
is more of a styling than anything else, as if they are all a different 
size, or if the size isn't changed, it all means the same.  However I do 
think that we should support different symbols sizes within a sign and 
for the meaning to depend on the size of the symbols to be able to write 
what Adam is signing or more exactly, similar examples which do not have 
movement.  Not that we would use different sizes in the all the signs 
but that some we can change their size to denote depth when we want to.  
And it would be part of the sign and not the styling because removing 
the size would change the meaning of those signs.  My programs have a 
separate data structure with can record the size of each individual 
symbol, which was always lost going to FSW until we got the styling.  
But is still lost on some of the other software which doesn't always 
permit importing some of the styling like the older SignMaker 2015.

Of course, for the current common encodings like FSW, etc to record 
which symbols are not at their default size within the sign part instead 
of the styling, would require extending the current specifications.  Or 
we could agree on a basic JSON representation which is a much more 
flexible data structure and is the common way of sharing and storing 
data in almost every programming language and in many modern databases.

I knew a deaf who wrote his notes, either expressive viewpoint from the 
back or expressive from the side.  I never saw him draw any from the 
top.  With just those two views, you could write everything without even 
having different types of arrows.  But it requires, stating in each sign 
which viewpoint is drawn.  He would change from one to the other with a 
quick body manikin in each sign.  We see other signers more often from 
the side than from the top, so I think it's an easier transition to 
write oneself from the side than from the top.  I'm not advocating we 
all write like he did, but I believe that in the case that when depth 
isn't clear with the expressive view, like in this special case Adam is 
mentioning, I believe it would prefer to read it from the side view than 
from the expressive back view.

When we can easily write everything we sign the way we normally sign and 
read it back and sign it the same again, and not feeling that we should 
sign something just a bit differently so that we can write it without 
too much trouble, then that would be a perfect writing system. And I 
believe that that has been and should be the goal of great sign writing 
systems like SignWriting.  If we can write things simply and intuitively 
with different size symbols instead of having to switch views to write 
some signs, then I believe it is improving the ease of use and the ease 
of adoption of SignWriting.

But in the case of writing with software that doesn't do symbol by 
symbol sizes, I prefer the side view.

Thanks for letting me share my 2cents

Jonathan

On 4/22/2021 11:13 AM, Valerie Sutton wrote:
> SignWrting List
> April 22, 2021
>
> Hello Adam, Andre, Cherie, Kacio, Steve, Jonathan and everyone -
>
> As you know, the Top View can be mixed with the Front View. The Head 
> in Top View establishes the “depth” but the rest of the sign .. the 
> hands, the movements … can be written in the Front View, placed either 
> near or far from the Head & body. It sounds crazy, but this 
> combination of viewpoints seems to be working for readers.
>
> And looking at the above diagram I can see other ways to write it too. 
> So there are a variety of choices. For me, the Movement Arrow gives me 
> the depth information, but if you do not want to use an arrow, then 
> the old “sizes” work very well.
>
> Originally SignWriting was designed to keep the writing ALL Front 
> View, using "size of symbols" to write the depth perspective of “far 
> away”. Smaller symbols represented “far away”.
>
>
>
> I am aware of the point, that Rich Text is great for individual 
> documents or signs that can be captured in graphics so the information 
> is not lost, but in an actual symbolset, the information of “small” vs 
> “large” would be lost if it is just plain text.
>
> Nonetheless, I am glad to know I can access the smaller symbols in the 
> two programs and I plan to use it for some demonstrations.
>
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